Et Spiritus Sancti
by JubeiYagyuSama
Summary: Set in the world of WORM, a web serial owned and created by Wildbow. The Parahuman community of a Texas city is thrown into turmoil by the arrival of a ruthless vigilante, and old secrets coming to light. Utilizes original characters, trying to avoid conflict with existing and future canon. Lots of violence, superhero fights, and swearing. Rated M to be safe.
1. Into the Sunset

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon his property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**INTO THE SUNSET**

_1938 Hours 05/20/2012 HIGHWAY 20 FORT WORTH - ABILENE_

The van sped west, toward the sun now setting among the scrubland ahead, and Raymond Callahan tapped his index fingers on the wheel as he went, waiting for the signal.

This part of Texas was reasonably green, if somewhat flat. He hadn't been here before. Closest he'd come was the base at Fort Worth, but that had been long ago and he'd been flown in and out without examining much of the countryside.

A hand found the dogtags at his throat, and he ran his finger over the raised characters, before returning his digits to the gearshift.

That HAD been long ago. And there was no sense in thinking too deeply about it now. That would just distract him from the mission.

He didn't need distractions right now.

He'd traded everything for the mission. Everything he was, and everything he'd ever be. There was only one way this could end, but if he was lucky, and he was good, and he stuck to the plan, then he'd complete the mission before he died. After that, anything that happened to him... Well, he'd worry about it THEN.

The tablet on the seat next to him beeped, and he eyed the highway before picking it up. Clear stretch. Should be good to read for a bit.

The email had no content, save the subject.

LANE'S TRUCK STOP IN 2 EXITS

Well. Time to get to work.

_1946 HOURS LANE'S TRUCK STOP, HIGHWAY 20_

He put on sunglasses before exiting the van, and taken the dog tags off, tucking them into a pocket. Not much he could do about the hair, but he'd forgone the traditional jacket in favor of a polo shirt and slacks. Just another tourist...

A few minutes pumping gas, swiping the card, then moving inside. Looking over the magazine racks, giving himself time to be noticed. The TV was blaring away, and he tuned in idly as he waited.

"...This, the thirtieth anniversary of Scion's emergence on May 20th, 1982. The world was forever changed that day, as the World's first parahuman was spotted flying above the Atlantic ocean. The first, but not the last. As the year passed, and this strange, incomprehensible golden man began to make himself known to the world by committing selfless acts, saving lives of those in need in almost a random fashion across the globe, more parahumans began to emerge from the population."

He glanced up at the screen. A local station. Must be a slow news day, he thought. The anchor was doing his best to avoid showing boredom, relaying information that children were taught in grade school, converting it into empty sound bites and filling otherwise dead air.

"And in the decades since, the first and foremost organized parahuman group, the Protectorate, has pledged service to humanity, to protecting the world from those who would abuse it, to making the world a little better through putting their lives on the line. Whether intervening in disasters both natural and manmade, jailing supervillains, or putting their lives on the line against the terrible threats of the monstrous Endbringers, the Protectorate has fulfilled their oath to support and abide by the oversight of the PRT, the Parahuman Response Team."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man in a business suit walk out of a lottery kiosk, and enter the restrooms. Finally, he thought. He waited a minute, before starting to follow.

Then the newscaster continued, and the voice from the screen stopped him cold.

"One such threat was located and contained last night, in our very own city of Nacogdoches. The parahuman vigilante Raymond Callahan, better known as Devil Dog, was cornered in the Hotel Fredonia center after brutally murdering local supervillains Foolsgold and Imperial. Three local heroes were caught in the crossfire, and one, Cypher Nine, remains in critical condition. Devil Dog was killed during the Protectorate response, and while his remains have been recovered, Southwest News Seven reminds viewers that the unique nature of his powers-"

Ah. THAT explained much. Raymond forced himself to look away, and walked into the restrooms. He'd grab a paper and read the details later- No. No, he could browse it online. He was still getting used to the tablet, but it was more convenient.

Still, he preferred newspapers when he could get them. There were times it felt like the modern era had left him behind, when he felt like he was running to keep pace. It was hard to learn things, harder to remember new information learned since that day in 2001.

And judging from the news report, his brain was going to be rusty for a while. It always was.

In the restroom, the man in the suit was washing his hands. His eyes didn't look at Raymond as he finished, straightened up and walked past him, leaving a taped packet on the restroom shelf.

Raymond pocketed it, moved into a stall, dropped his slacks and sat on the crapper while he read.

There were three documents in there, bundled up tightly and stapled together.

The first was a location. Sancti, Texas. A small city north of here, according to the brief. Oil city, lots of businesses, lots of money for its size. Lots of crime. A fair amount of supervillains, too, and not nearly enough heroes.

Ray felt his lips draw back over his teeth.

Good.

The next page listed his primary targets. He looked through the short, unemotional summaries on their sheets, paused as he saw the last one. He felt the grin spread wider, and bared his teeth with animal joy. He'd been WONDERING when this particular number would come up.

He only spared a few seconds for the emotion, then moved on to the third document. A name, a picture, an address. His grin vanished as he read the details, then nodded once in satisfaction. Well. His allies had thought of everything, this time around.

His musing was interrupted by shouting from outside. Unhurried, he stood and pulled his pants up, then moved out of the stall. He pocketed the documents, and their wrapper. His allies hated loose ends, after all.

"I SAID OPEN IT UP GRANDPA!"

He rolled his eyes behind the sunglasses. Seriously?

He moved over to the restroom mirror, and looked it over. Sure enough, there were a few good edges... He wrapped his hand in a paper towel, selected one of them, and gave it a firm wrench, breaking a chunk of glass free.

The shouting from the travel mart continued, as Raymond headed to the entrance, crouched down, and stuck the mirror out, low to the ground and angled so that he could see.

Yep, it was a holdup. Two teens with pistols in front of the counter, one with a shotgun threatening a young couple and their toddler-age kids over in the snacks aisle. .357 Magnum revolvers and a Mossberg pump action, he noted absent-mindedly.

"I-I can't," the man behind the counter stuttered. He was on the late side of his sixties if he was a day, with white whiskers and wire-rimmed spectacles. "It's on a time lock, and besides there's only-"

The rightmost teen punched him, sending him to the ground behind the counter. And for a few seconds, out of their sight.

Perfect.

Raymond was already moving, retrieving his KA-BAR knife from its ankle rig as he went, then walked briskly toward the shotgunner, hand held down, keeping the knife out of sight. The punk turned and took him in, whipping the gun around and yelling "HEY! HEY DOWN ON THE GROUND YOU BIG MOTHAFUC-"

Raymond dove for the ground, kept on rolling, grabbed the shotgunners leg and yanked it out from under him as he drove the KA-BAR through the kid's wrist and into the tile of the floor. He squealed, and Raymond planted a foot on his throat, grabbing the shotgun in the same motion as he pushed himself into a kneeling position, ignoring the gurgling youth.

By now they've noticed things aren't going to plan. He figured, and the man and his wife shrieked and pulled their kids down farther to the ground as the thugs up toward the counter fired panicked shots into the cooler behind Raymond, shattering glass and beer bottles as he kept his head below the aisle, aimed at one of the shelves, and fired.

The twelve-gauge buckshot punched a hole in the flimsy particle-board shelf, the first punk's abdomen, and the snack-racks behind it. A spray of blood and chips coated the counter, and Raymond was rolling as the second punk's blind fire tore through where he had been kneeling, perforating the downed shotgunner as he fought to free his wrist from the KA-BAR.

Raymond kept rolling, counting as he went. Four... Five.. Six.

And he rose, sighting down the barrel as the kid broke the revolver, fumbled out a speed loader, and froze. Cartridges fell to the floor, in a pitter of brass rain.

The kid dropped the revolver, raised his hands. "Man, I give. Go on and read me my rights, I know how this-" Raymond pumped the shotgun. The kid's eyes widened. He couldn't be older than sixteen, dressed in baggy pants with some sort of gang colors on his jacket. Young. Young and stupid. Young and stupid and dangerous.

"Hey! Hey, what is this! I surrendered! Man, you can't just shoot someone in..."

He looked at Raymond, REALLY looked. And he KNEW.

"Oh shit..."

The shotgun spoke, and he dropped, kicking, heels drumming on the dusty tile floor as the blood pooled and spread around his groaning friend. The kid was clutching his belly, trying to keep his guts in. Well, what were left of them.

He spared a glance to the shotgunner. Three of his friend's magnum rounds had found him, he wouldn't be getting up again. He glanced at the civilians... The wife had grabbed the kids, shoved them into the corner and was hunched over, keeping them low and still and shielding them with her body. Raymond approved. The children were crying, scared. The husband had a cell phone out, was punching numbers as fast as his shaking hand could go. He scrambled backward on his feet and rump as Raymond walked over to him, took the phone from his hand without any real effort, and popped the battery out. He handed the phone back, and the man said nothing, fear on his face.

Raymond turned toward the door... And the old man behind the counter rose up, a pistol in his hand and pointed at Raymond. Thirty-eight, he noted. Not great stopping power, but the man moved like he knew what he was doing-

Wait.

The old man had a tattoo on his arm. An eagle, a globe, an anchor.

Raymond lowered the shotgun. Smiled. "Hoo-ah." He said.

The old man looked at him. His previous cowardice with the punks had been a sham, Raymond could see. Those eyes were shooter's eyes, Ray himself saw copies of them in the mirror every morning when he was shaving.

The pistol lowered. "You're him, ain't you."

Raymond moved over to the shotgunner's dying body, ground a foot into the bloody mess of the boy's hand, and retrieved his knife. He didn't answer.

"You didn't need to kill those kids."

Raymond stood, wiping his hands on a nearby magazine rack. He said nothing, looking between the dead teenagers, and the family cowering in the corner of the snacks aisle as beer seeped out the ruined coolers, mixing with the spreading blood. He looked at the mother shielding her toddlers, and then back at the old man. He didn't say a word. He didn't need to.

The old man sighed, replacing his pistol behind the counter. In the distance, sirens started to rise. Raymond walked towards the door, pausing to pocket the revolvers as he went. .357's were decent enough for sidearms, if a little flashy.

"Shit. Thought I saw the last of this in Khe Sanh. Get out of my store, Devil Dog."

Raymond paused, smiled. "Semper Fi, pops."

"Sempre Fi, you fucking nutjob. Now scram."

He climbed into the driver's seat, dropping his new guns in the back before shutting the door and starting her up. He gauged the sirens from long experience... He figured he had two minutes. He pulled out, unhurried, and joined traffic. At the next exit he'd pull in and swap out plates, stick a false logo on the sides. There were hundreds of thousands of vans just like his throughout Texas, and he'd been doing this a long, long time.

After that... Sancti. Sancti and some REAL targets.

As he rejoined the highway, he watched the cruisers scramble down the other ramp, towards the gas station and the three dead gangers. Yeah. Two, maybe three minutes, at least. Easy.

Still, it bothered him that he hadn't taken the store clerk's measure. One shot of that crappy little .38 could have put him down. It was a rookie mistake, a FNG mistake. If he slipped up like that in Sancti he'd be dead. Worse, he'd fail the mission.

Death he could handle. But his failures grated on him. After all, he'd traded everything he had for the mission. If it failed, it was all for nothing.

And so he drove on, into the sunset, leaving corpses behind him.

Nothing he hadn't done before, many times over...


	2. Thin Blue Lines

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon his property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**Thin Blue Lines**

0659, 05/21/2012 SANCTI PD

It was only seven in the morning, and Officer Maria Navarrez could already tell that the day was going to suck.

Lieutenant Daniel cleared his throat, as he pointed at the whiteboard. It was old and cracked, with faded marker stains on it from years of use. Much like the rest of the room, it was substandard equipment. The drop-ceiling tiles were stained with tobacco from back when smoking had been allowed indoors, the linoleum tiled floor was sagging in spots, grimy in others, and the weighty metal desks they were sitting at had probably been liberated from some high school closing or the other. The more obese members of the force were standing. They couldn't fit in the desks.

Maria didn't have that problem, though she was a long way from the thinness of her high school days. At the age of thirty, her hair was already starting to show wisps of silver, her figure reflected the fact that she'd had two children early on in life, and her hips were JUST shy of a smooth fit in the cracked plastic seat. She shifted, constantly, when she was sitting. Still, it was better than standing... After that injury two years ago, her ankle had never quite recovered. Limited mobility was normally a consignment to desk duty in the department, but she'd pled and fought and worked through therapy, to show that she was still fit for patrol duty and street response.

She couldn't fly a desk. It would kill her. The street was where it all went down, and Sancti PD was short-handed enough already.

Short-handed, underfunded, and outgunned.

Thanks to the oil strike fifteen years ago, money had come to town, and with it the big corporations, the tech firms, the industries. Jobs boomed again, and what had once been a fading, sleepy little town had taken off into one of northern Texas' biggest success stories. Development had been swift and thorough, and it was a rare day that the sounds of construction weren't heard in the city limits, or in the 'burbs outside.

More work for the SPD, and more problems. The old mayor had been generous with tax breaks to try and keep people and businesses from moving on. But then the oil boom had changed things, and tax revenues hadn't changed at all. As such, the public services, the firefighters, the police were all underfunded, and working at pre-boom levels. It would have been rough even without the other factors at play.

Because with the jobs and population growth and money came corruption, and crime. Drugs, and gangs, and all the other joys of a newly-big city. Worse, there were CAPES.

And so, whenever a new one came onto the radar, the Captain got to go have a meeting with the local PRT director, and after that he had a meeting with HIS lieutenants, and the normal morning briefing was cancelled, replaced with a facts session about the latest threat. They were almost always a threat. It was very, very rarely good news.

In this case, she didn't know how much the facts session was needed. And it cut into the day's job allocation, eating up time which was short enough already.

But she stayed put, choked back her restlessness, played the good little cop. She'd made enough waves in the department already, and her career didn't need any more ill-will from up top. Nothing she hadn't been doing for years. When you're a woman AND a minority in what was, until recently, a good-old-boys club? You learn real fast not to be bitchy or whine. Or do anything that could be seen as such.

Brad, her partner who had only one such setback to his name, leaned over from his own teeny desk. He whispered "This blows. We know all this already."

She made a little shutup gesture at him as Lt. Daniel cleared his throat again, and used the marker to trace down the bullet points.

"All right. Gentlemen. Lady. This is what we know. The cape known as Devil Dog, real-name Raymond Callahan, was taken down recently in Nacogdoches. It was a bloody business, and there was a fair amount of collateral. Roughly twenty-two hours later, yesterday night in fact he turns up again in a truck stop outside Abilene. Takes down three members of Los Verde easy as shellin' goobers. Walks outta there. No collateral, by the grace a' Jesus."

Collateral, in Daniel-speak, meant bystanders down or dead. It was a nicer way of saying "there were injuries and corpses" from an incident. Scanned better in the local news cycle. It was telling that Lt. Dante didn't count the mostly-hispanic members of Los Verde among the collateral. She wondered if he even noticed he was doing it. Probably not.

"As most of y'all probably know, Devil Dog surfaced in 2001. He didn't have his name, then, he was Staff Sergeant Raymond Callahan, USMC, retired. Desert Storm Veteran. Decorated, too. Bronze star, several other honors. By all accounts a good man. Settled into his hometown, Elllisburg back in the 90s with his wife, son, and daughter. Started a garage, did work customizing and repairing trucks."

"But in 2001, things went to hell. A new Cape surfaced in Ellisburg. Real monster named Nilbog."

Maria really, really hoped they wouldn't show the tape. As a mother herself, that footage was painful to watch.

That hope was dashed as the secretary, Laney, wheeled an old-fashioned bulky television into the room on a cart. God, this was going to be depressing. At least the DVD player was new, so they could see this whole, messy clip in high-definition blu-ray.

"On February 2nd, 2001, Nilbog surfaced. He started makin' freakshow-type monsters, overran Ellisburg. Took over the town. And everyone that didn't get clear, died. Includin' capes."

"Raymond wanted to get his family clear, too. And he was a hell of a soldier, so he grabbed his guns and loved ones, loaded them into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, and tried to get outta town. Couldn't. 'Bout the time he found that out, his radio caught an emergency broadcast. The National Guard had set up an evac for the survivors they could see. Got a few Chinooks to airlift civvies out, but the window was short and shrinking. So Ray fought his way back to the nearest evac point, got them up to the top of the school, with the other refugees."

"Problem is, it wasn't just civilians that wanted out. The local villains had heard the evac orders too. And they didn't want to stand in line. Laney, could y' be a dear?"

Laney put the DVD into the player, and shut off the room's lights.

The feed cut in abruptly. A shakey-cam, held from one of the transports above, viewing the scene below. An old-fashioned school, two stories and orange brick, with a crowd of maybe thirty people on its roof. Women, children, a few men. A few were carrying infants. The crowd was staying way clear of a flare-marked LZ, waiting for the transport to land. Then motion at the peripheral of the camera's view, and it panned down to the area around the school.

Beyond the roof, down on the ground, monsters filled the view. Things the size of an SUV that were all head and muscular legs, picking up small cars in the parking lot and shaking them, trying to get at people trapped within. One monster managed to shake his Yugo so hard that a bloody, battered form came crashing through a windshield, and it dropped the car in a heartbeat, opening an oversized maw and scooping up the body to swallow it whole. In the school's playground, small, children-sized naked things with bits of fencing, torn-apart playground equipment, and other improvised weapons chased fleeing people down, swarming them like piranha, and tearing them to shreds. One hoisted a bloody spinal column to the sky, mouth open in a soundless shriek of triumph.

Then a flash of light from above, and the camera panned up quickly to settle back on the roof. The crowd was fleeing to the corners in fear, as a man in a red costume wearing metal gauntlets fired what looked all the world like a laser beam into the air, and pointed at the chopper, beckoning it down.

The chopper held position, and she watched the camera pull back as two guardsmen moved to the door, readying assault rifles. A third pulled out a megaphone, and started saying something. Then the three twitched, convulsed... One of the riflemen fell through the open door, and was gone.

The other two managed to pull back, and the unseen camera man pushed the camera out, holding it even more shakily, probably at arm's length.

The man in red had been joined by a woman in a black jumpsuit, who was pointing at the chopper. Some kind of mist flowed between her and the open door, the camera could detect the mist as a haze in the air, thick and poisonous looking. She'd held back from dosing the full helicopter, just catching the men at the door.

As they watched, the man in red strode over to the edge of the crowd, grabbed the nearest person, a red-haired woman wearing a simple dress and a windbreaker, and dragged her over to the landing pad.

As he did, a tall man with a high-and tight haircut and an assault rifle in his hands stepped out of the crowd. The feed was jerky, it was hard to make out details, but he was talking with laser-guy, threatening him with the rifle.

The two seemed to be at a standoff... And then the rifleman dropped, clawing his face. Half the crowd around him went down as well... The mist had shifted away from the chopper, the woman was pointing towards the rifleman now.

Daniel spoke. "The punk in red called himself Beam Saber. Basically, his power was laser beams. The woman was Macetress, could generate a cloud that was like extra-strong teargas."

Beam Saber gestured again at the chopper, jerked his arm desperately, trying to wave it down. The chopper started to move away, and his beckoning got more and more frantic. Finally, he grabbed the screaming woman and lifted her up, walking to the edge of the roof.

"And that was Callahan's wife."

By now the cameraman had moved up, and steadied things as best he could. He panned down, revealing the first wave of crawling horrors that were slowly, inevitably, climbing the walls of the school.

And the feed caught, in full color, what happened when Beam Saber threw the woman down over the side.

Maria forced herself to watch, though it disgusted her. Her partner looked away. He could get away with that, she couldn't. But she didn't grudge him that, after all they'd been through. After he'd saved her life.

Ahead of her, Berman made a choking noise. He looked away, and she could tell he was fighting not to hurl. Poor kid, fresh out of the academy. The others would rib him for this, toughen him up, and he'd come out better for it, hopefully. Either that or find another line of work.

Back on the screen, the chopper was pulling away, as the cameraman caught the last shots. Beam Saber grabbing another civilian from the crowd, the rest of the crowd gathering their courage and trying to fight, as Macetress gassed them down. Then the view rotated, and the camera man pulled back, closing the door with a grim finality.

The DVD ended. The room full of hardened officers sighed in relief. That had been... No. Even ten years later, it was still a pretty horrible thing to see.

"Ray Callahan was presumed dead. This state prevailed until June of 2004. Beam Saber and Macetress turned up again in Chicago, briefly. Guess they managed to fight their way out of Ellisburg, after the school thing. Not that it mattered. Three days after he showed up in Chicago, Beam Saber was the victim of a car bomb. The next afternoon, Macetress got a face full of buckshot while walkin' out of a public restroom. She was in her civvies at the time."

"Both of 'em were found with an ace of spades playing card on their body, or somewhere on the scene."

"Couldn't a happened to nicer perps, but when the PRT investigated, they found a trail leading to a fellow who was damn near the spittin' image of Ray Callahan."

"CPD tried to apprehend him. Couldn't. Local capes stepped in, tracked him down, and damn near died when he triggered six bricks of plastique to drop the building he was in, rather than be captured."

"They dug up the remains, confirmed the DNA, and it made for a fuckin' media field day. The Marine that wouldn't let his wife's killers get away. Devil Dog, someone started callin' him, and it stuck. And Ray Callahan got himself a closed-casket funeral."

"Six weeks later, he turned up again in Sacremento. Took down Pusher, a cape whose power was bleeding meth. Took down Screamthief. I ain't gettin' into what HIS powers did, that's another nightmare if you want to look it up on your own time. Point is, they were some seriously nasty villains, and Callahan dropped them. Left the ace of spades, again, each time."

"This time the Protectorate went after him. He died in the fight, after killing Lifeline, a new graduate from the Wards. Again, the body was retrieved. Again, DNA testing and every procedure they could find verified that this was Callahan. This was the guy."

"One week later he surfaces in Vancouver. The PRT fails to catch him before he burns down a warehouse with the local crime kingpin, Grandmaster, holed up inside. This time he escapes before the Protectorate can get to him. Leaves an ace of spades pattern burned into the rubble of the warehouse before he goes."

"Since then, he's surfaced repeatedly. Over the last nine years he's accounted for the direct deaths of forty-six capes, one-hundred and six civilians, and the injury of many, many more. He has committed property damage well into the high millions, is guilty of so many other felonies that his rap sheet takes five minutes to download on our mainframe, and that is just the crimes that we KNOW about."

"And he's turned up twice in Texas in the space of less than a day. So every police department in the whole damn STATE is getting some variation on this briefing at this very minute, or earlier."

The room was quiet. The rookie, Berman, raised his hand. "Sir?"

"Officer Berman."

"The... I'm not quite sure. What kind of powers does he have?"

"As I have stated Officer Berman, he can FUCKING DIE and show up again later, clearly not dead. This seems to be a pretty serious power."

"But... I mean... All those capes, how is he killing them?"

Daniel sighed. Maria could see him fighting to keep from showing his disgust. The kid WAS new after all. Finally, the lieutenant answered. "Bullets, explosives, traps, at one point commandeering an industrial crane and dropping a twenty-ton load of girders on a supposedly invincible cape, incindiaries, suffocation, and at one point hijacking a truckload of liquid nitrogen to FREEZE one poor bastard to death. I mean hell, there's damn few invulnerable capes out there 'cept them endbringer fuckers and he doesn't go after those."

Huh, liquid nitrogen? That was one she hadn't heard. But she hadn't really been following Devil Dog, to tell the truth. She tried to stay out of cape business, and besides, the online fandom for that particular vigilante was kind of creepy.

"So he's just a normal guy?" Berman wasn't taking the hint. She could see some of the older bulls in the back of the room exchanging looks. The kid was going to catch some hazing later, they'd see to that.

"Officer Berman, as I said before, and you have not LISTENED, he can FUCKING DIE and turn up again later, and he KNOWS THIS. As such, he does not seem to care much about preserving his life, and that gives him a huge FUCKING ADVANTAGE. Add to that the fact he is a bonafide decorated war hero who survived the sandbox and was GOOD at his job, can use just about any type of firearm or conventional explosive that you can imagine, and we have a REAL POTENTIAL FUCKING HEADACHE here."

Berman nodded. "So it's on par with the AMM, got it."

Daniel looked like he was going to burst a vein. Brad, bless his heart, decided to save the kid any more pain. He raised a hand and asked without waiting.

"Okay Ell-Tee, what does the chief want us to do if he starts murderlating folks rounda bout these parts?"

Daniel's face moved from anger to mild irritation. "Well, Officer Kent, we are to observe and report, and attempt to keep Collateral out of the line of fire. We are to notify the PRT at the earliest opportunity, and move to minimize damage to non-parahuman bystanders."

The officers around the room were looking at each other and nodding, and a low murmur of conversation started up. This was a sane response, a good one. They could do this. Better if they didn't have to, but if he turned up, yeah. Lord knows this town had plenty of villains, if he took a few out it wouldn't be so bad.

"Quiet," Daniel commanded. The room hushed. He wasn't done, and Maria felt her heart sink as his mood soured. This wasn't going to be good news. "We're also on notice for another thing. A special order. See, every time Devil Dog turns up, he's using different types of equipment and arms. Most of it that's been taken as evidence seems to have been acquired during the 2001-2004 timeframe. The PRT's working theory is that he used those three years to build up caches around the country."

Maria frowned. That... Sort of made sense? But he'd died what, twenty, thirty times or so over the last nine years? That was a lot of cached equipment. Especially for a former garage mechanic, who probably didn't have trust funds from wealthy, dead parents to fall back on.

"So we're going to check a few potential cache sites, that COULD have been created during that time frame."

Ay dios mia, she saw where this was going.

"As such, regular patrols will be on half-time until further notice, and for at least the next few days, we're going to be using the time saved to check a number of abandoned and/or wrecked sites around the city and the surrounding region."

She felt her stomach slowly turn over, reached for her roll of antacids.

"Our primary objective is to locate and confiscate any hardware located. In the event of resistance or encountering Callahan, we are to fall back and call in support. Now, here's a list of the sites we'll have to go through before thursday..."

The screech of the marker on the whiteboard didn't interrupt her gloom, as she watched him assign different teams to different sites. This was bad. VERY bad.

Later on, she sat with Brad in the lot, and waited for the mechanic to finish working on their cruiser, number 17. The oil leak wasn't getting any better... It was probably the cylinders, but the department couldn't afford a fix, there. The best they could do was a quick patch on some of the trouble spots.

The rookie, Berman, stopped on his way out, looked them over. "Hey. Why's everyone so glum? It's not like this is a death sentence."

Brad snorted, shook his head. "No. But it's still gonna suck. Poking into all those nooks and crannies."

"What? We run a few bums out, maybe find some drugs or guns, make the PRT happy for once. Collar some gangers, if we get lucky. Sounds like an easy deal." Berman smiled. Maria tried to remember if she had ever been that naive. Maybe before she met her ex-husband. Maybe.

She sighed. "It is not so simple," she explained. "Think about it. The Graveyard Gang, the Serpent Lodge, the Faithful, where do they have their lairs?"

"Well no one knows, they're hiding some-" Berman stopped. Berman's eyes went wide. "Oh." His voice was very, very small.

"Precisely. The Alamo pendejos, they at least have their damn compound, but the rest? And the independent villains?"

"We're not actually hunting weapons." Said Brad, serious for once. "The PRT's using this to get us to flush out villains. Director goddamn sisterfucker Tate needs some good PR, and we're the excuse. We're getting sent out into the most likely locations as cannon fodder, mine canaries... Bait."

Berman's face went pale, and he sat down, too. "I... How could Marshal be okay with this?"

Maria snorted. "You think he knows? They probably have him and the rest of the team out looking in different places, or investigating something else. He won't know anything is wrong until some cops get hurt or killed, and call in the PRT. Then they send in his team, and they get to ride in. Big damn heroes, like always."

Berman was quiet. The three of them watched the mechanic finish up under the hood of cruiser 17. She and Brad looked at each other, nodded, and stood. Berman stood shakily. "Hey. Uh... Thanks for explaining it. I... I know I'm kind of new to all this, and I appreciate-"

"Skip it." Said Brad, slapping his shoulder. "This is how you learn, huh? Don't be afraid if they make fun of you back in there. Roll with it. They're TRYING to get a rise out of you now, so they see how you handle when there's stress but no danger. That lets them see how you handle when there's REAL danger."

Maria nodded. "Take it with good grace, keep asking questions," she advised. "Always have their back, and don't complain even if things are unfair."

Berman nodded. "I better get back. Saul should be done with his injections by now."

Maria winced. There were crosses to bear, but that particular one always made her sad. Also made her thankful that she'd survived the same incident that had crippled Officer Saul. She'd managed to miss any of the complications that he had to deal with for the rest of his life.

Well no, that wasn't accurate. There was ONE problem, of a sort, and it wasn't going away. Though it had the silver lining of being occasionally useful, at least.

She piled into the car, took the wheel. Brad slipped in next to her, smiling. "Good kid. Hope he survives the next few days."

"You just think he's hot," she said. The ignition took a few tries to turn over. Brad shook his head. "Nah, he's straight. No pings on my radar, Mare." When she'd first joined, it took her a few weeks to figure out why Brad was one of the few unmarried men (or married men for that matter,) who didn't hit on her. She felt fairly stupid when the obvious answer turned out to be true. Then she felt annoyance that the good old boy crew had paired the only woman on the force with the only gay man on the force. After she got over that, she realized that she was actually pretty damn lucky... Officer Brad Kent was a good cop, one of the best she knew. Since then, he'd also been the best friend she'd ever had. Well, the best white one, anyway.

She pulled out onto the street, started up the patrol. The real work wouldn't come until after the patrol was done... Their first site was an old rock quarry, with a few freestanding buildings. Probably safe, but it was remote enough that it needed checking.

Brad interrupted her train of thought. "We might need you to uh, not hold back this time, if things go south."

She flicked her eyes at him. "We talked about this."

"Yeah, I know. But I'm saying, this has the potential to blow the hell up, Mare."

"Camera," she warned. But she knew before she flicked her eyes to it, the dashboard cam light was off. The department hadn't fixed it after the last "malfunction."

"I'm just saying, we could be in some serious shit here if things go wrong. You shouldn't hold back if shit goes down."

She kept her mouth shut.

"At least use it to help search. Can you do that?"

She grimaced. Thought of Jenny. Thought of Ellisa. Her two beautiful daughters... Ellisa would be four next week. Maria still hadn't gotten her a present, yet. Hadn't called the other mothers, figured out where to hold the party. Her apartment just wasn't big enough... And now THIS, to worry about.

"I... It's complicated," she said. Brad snorted. "It's only complicated because you WANT it to be complicated. It could be simple. Would it really be so hard to go up to the PRT, to MARSHAL? You can trust HIM, you know. Would it be so hard to say "Hi, my name's Maria Navarrez, and I have parahuman pow-"

She jerked the wheel, pulling into a parking lot and hit the brakes, sending the car to a screeching halt before turning on him, her anger full on her face.

"You were there. You made your choice. I made mine." She said, quiet and intense.

Brad closed his eyes. "Sorry," he replied. "I didn't want to see you die."

"I know. But... Too much time has passed since then. There would be questions. Lots of them. And I've made my choice. If it was just me hurt if things go wrong, maybe. But it's not just me."

Brad nodded. "The perils of being a working mom, I know. Believe me, I know. But... Ah, I don't want to fight. It just seems to me that if you're going to be going into danger anyway, as a cop, why shouldn't you be famous and getting paid for it? You allergic to spandex or something? Or does money make you break out in hives?"

She put the parking brake on, kicked it to neutral. "Look. I'll use it to help search, okay? That should be pretty small. It shouldn't hurt."

"Now we're talking. Come on, I'll drive." He opened his door.

"Not only that, you're buying lunch. Get me tapas! The good kind, from Juan Two Many." She growled, in mock rage, as they swapped spots.

"Juan's? Again? Jesus... Crazy lady thinks I'm made of money..."

She ignored his grumbling as she settled back in her seat, closed her eyes.

"Uh, you know we're not at the quarry yet," Brad smirked.

"It's been a while, I'm practicing. You wanted me to work, let me work."

And as the car rolled on through the dusty streets, she settled back in the seat and let her power roll out from her...


	3. Information Overload

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon his property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**Information Overload**

0340, 05/21/2012 NUEVO MUNDO TRAILER PARK, OUTSKIRTS OF SANCTI

It was almost four in the morning and John Hambly couldn't sleep.

Oh he'd tried, but it was going to be one of those nights. The medication was getting more and more useless as his body adapted to it, and the meditation exercises were feeling stale.

It wasn't that he couldn't focus. That wasn't the problem. That was NEVER the problem. It was that he had too MUCH focus. He could NEVER lose focus, not even when he was sleeping.

John Hambly got up from the mattress, and dressed with numb fingers. His carpal tunnel was acting up again. This would make the next few hours painful at best, and agonizing at worst. More than once he had considered a vocal dictation setup, but he'd had to discard the idea each time. Too much chance of being overheard by passers-by.

He tugged on a pair of size fifty jeans on an ample belly, grunting as he got the belt cinched. A sweat-stained white shirt went on up top, followed by a paisley tie. He hadn't worked at an office job in the last seven years, but old habits died hard. He just wasn't COMFY unless he was wearing his business casual. Well, extra casual, if you counted the jeans. A set of bifocals for his eyes, and he smoothed his vanishing hairline back, before sighing and opening the bedroom door.

He moved through his doublewide, toward the off-green glow in the back room. Toward his office.

Well. If he couldn't sleep, he could at least get some work done.

He sunk into the padded chair, letting his overlarge rump fill the familiar groves. A questing hand reached out and found a half-open can of iced tea, gently shook it. Liquid sloshed inside, and he took a lukewarm mouthful.

He booted his system, ran the usual checks, and while his daemons were flitting about hither and yon, examined his webmail drops.

There were four new ones. John sighed. Four. Not enough to challenge him for long. And if he did them now and his other clients had nothing tomorrow, then he'd be at loose ends for a day or so.

He ran the risk of getting bored. Of having nothing to focus on.

This was NOT a light matter...

Well. He could skim them at least. Look them over without focusing on them for LONG. Just long enough to get a feel, see if there were any he could start that would last into the morning, then save the others for the afternoon. If he could do that, find something that would last for more than a few hours, then he could probably string his brain along until he finally dropped from exhaustion.

The air conditioning hummed softly as he pulled up the first email. And he kicked his brain into light activity.

Time to stop being John Hambly. Occam was on the job.

**FROM: .dom **

**TO: .mail **

**SUBJECT: Quantum Mechanics**

**Grimes. Your above-average analysis is rapidly requested for a project that requires nothing less than perfection. The quantum device revealed below in three diagrams**

He stopped the screen from scrolling down, squeezed his eyes shut as the information cascaded through his cortex. _Doctor Dire. Thinker three, Tinker seven. Penchant for robots, recent analysis of covert activities suggested branching out, an attempt to define new specialties. Also thought to be dead, though a two-minute consideration of the circumstances of her apprehension and conveyance to the Birdcage showed minute inconsistencies with previous behavior. The quantum device mentioned had approximately a thirty-percent chance of keeping his mind busy for the next eight hours, a twenty-two percent chance of being an easy fix, and a forty-eight percent chance of being a complete and utter waste of time, given her previous confiscated devices, recent activity under various pseudonyms, and stolen research purchased from other agents. The fact that she located and used the Grimes mail drop meant that she was distracted by her recent efforts to the point that she was letting other matters slip, particularly internet security. A Thinker of her stature should have caught the false drop and utilized the pseudonym two layers down. Distraction on this level indicated a forty-two percent chance of compromise from Protectorate or nemesis activity within-_

He broke his train of thought, as painful as it was to do, and leaned back in his chair. He massaged his temples, and glared at the screen. Okay, analyzing the device COULD use up most of the morning, if it was within Dire's usual parameters. But a one in three chance or so was a little low.

He moved on to the second email.

**FROM: .net **

**TO: Redacted**

**SUBJECT: I know something...**

**...That you might not. Case 53, does that ring a bell? Drop me a line if you want to chat. Make it worth my while and you might even learn something.**

He groaned. HER again? But his power was already at work... _Trying to broker information? False. Dissemination the goal, price only there to encourage greed. Chum in the waters, stirring up response in order to gain more variables. Ignore? Couldn't. Information likely solid. Standing order from Faultline for information on subject, had to follow up. Worse, SHE knew that._

He let his power run its course. There really wasn't that much to consider, he'd have to reply, and worse, HAGGLE. Undignified. He did not like dealing with this source, and she knew it. Her power was much like his own, only far, far more useful. And she knew THAT as well. Little gloating punk.

Well, that email had been a bust.

The power flickered, and he snarled. He double-checked the junction box, kicked it lightly, and waited for it to settle down. Damn thing had been on the brink for-

A wisp of his power surfaced, having nothing better to work on._ Flickering pattern not standard for that wattage, subtly different variances and timing. Junction box was not problem. Hookup outside likely target, interference suggests human agent, wirecutters. Possibility of power outage followed shortly by assault and entry approximately 82%-_

He jerked his power to a halt, taking the backlash in his frontal lobe as he bolted out of his chair, scrambling for the hall closet. He got to it just as the lights went out, and he pawed the door open, hands shaking as he heard the back door cave in. His power fought to rise up again but he choked it down, couldn't COULD NOT let himself focus on the wrong thing here...

It was only a second or two later, but he felt his hands brush against the metal in back of the closet, feel out the hidden keypad and push in the numbers. It hissed open, revealing a dark tube, with winking LEDs deep within. And as he stepped forward into it, breathing a sigh of relief, he felt something cold press against the back of his neck.

A gun barrel.

He didn't need his power to identify THAT. He closed his eyes, as his hopes and dreams crashed, one by one. He supposed it had been only a matter of time, really.

"I won't beg." He said.

"Not asking you to. Step back." A voice commanded. He opened his eyes. NOT who he thought it had been? Hell, there might be a chance of coming out of this alive. He backed up.

The man in the night-vision goggles closed the closet door as soon as Occam emerged. He was practically shivering in fear... He'd never liked fighting, not one bit. Had no illusions about what would happen if he tried anything with that gun in his face. And his power, his lovely, vexing power, was virtually useless in most combat situations. He locked it down to a dull roar.

"I... Um. Can I... Help you? I don't... Have many valuables..."

"You're Occam. The information broker."

He teased out enough of his power to learn that denying it would be a VERY bad idea. The power also whispered at him as it went, and he blinked before locking it down again. The high-and-tight cut, the methods, the recent sightings, the accent, the stance... Yes, he knew who it was. _97%, give or take .002%_

"And you're Devil Dog. I don't fit the profile of your most selected targets, so you it's highly unlikely you wish me dead. Okay, okay, I can work with that. Can, uh, we sit down and talk this out?

It WASN'T going to be a combat situation. Not so long as he avoided compromising or resisting the vigilante. That was okay, Occam could work with that.

Devil Dog nodded, stripped off his goggles, and motioned toward the main room, and the couch. His gun was still in his hand, but he'd pointed it down at least.

Ponder went and sat, heaving a sigh as he did. A little light from the outside filtered in here, he could sort of see the big man's general form. "Um. Wirecutters to the power. Not polite, to be honest. Got batteries for the important stuff, but I'm going to have to go out there and fix it tomorrow."

Devil Dog stood by the hallway out, simply looking him over. He was silent.

Occam swallowed. He'd turned his mind to Devil Dog before, analyzed him in his off-time now and then, when he had nothing better to focus on. It had never gotten him far, and the information was far too incomplete to fill in the many blanks. It always led to his mind demanding more information than he could find. But now he had the puzzle himself in the room, not six feet away. This could be an opportunity...

Devil Dog spoke. "Your power helps you investigate. Gather information."

Occam shook his head. "Popular misconception. Well, for those that've heard of me. It doesn't help me gather information or investigate. It gives me eidetic memory, lines up the facts and clues I know, and lets me focus on something with every neuron in my brain. I can make connections, estimate percentages that are QUITE accurate, and follow things to their logical conclusion. I can focus on an issue, mull it over, and prognosticate the likely outcome of an action, provided I have enough facts and no new variables enter the equation. Moreover, I can, with an average 95% success rate, avoid an incorrect logic path."

Devil Dog shrugged. "Close enough."

Occam kept shaking his head. "But it doesn't help me investigate or gather information. I have to do that on my own. It helps me CHECK information, figure out mysteries and secrets, and suggest courses of action that are desireable for the party involved."

"And right now, that's useful to me." The vigilante took a seat across from him.

Occam shrugged. "Well, as long as you can keep it quiet, we can do business. My fee is-"

"Freedom."

"Um. Say what?" But hope reared up in his chest, and he resisted the urge to peek with his power. He didn't want to be disappointed again...

"The Alamo Memorial Militia owns you."

Occam swallowed, hard. If this got out... But it could be the break he was looking for. "I've got a rep as a free agent. Neutral. No sides."

"Which is false. Anytime you hit information useful to their cause, you pass it along to the AMM. They don't let you leave town. They take a cut of your payments to help fund the cause. They provide you with little toys like that hidden room in your closet."

"Actually that one was purchased from a client. They don't know about it." Occam pressed his lips together, considered the big man sitting in his chair. "How would you get me free?"

Devil Dog looked at him, removed the nightvision goggles. "You know what I do."

They sat for a few minutes. Occam blinked, rubbed his aching hands together. "All of them? One of them was a marine, once."

"Enough of them that I can't avoid it, probably." Devil Dog's voice was soft, unconcerned. Almost lazy.

It struck Occam that he should probably be a little more worried. The man across from him was threatening to do a lot of damage to people who tended to hold grudges, and not be forgiving to those who assisted their enemies. If he failed, and they learned of Occam's involvement, it would be bad.

Still... The devil he knew wasn't here. And the devil he didn't know, offered a tantalizing chance at escaping his circumstances.

"Yeah, I'm their bitch." He said, bitterly. "When I first came into my power, I didn't cover my tracks online well enough. Didn't have the skills. I was a CPA, for crissakes... The hell did I know about security? Learned quick, but it was too late. General Crockett had me brought in after his hackers tracked my activity for a few weeks. Had a talk with me, and here I've been ever since. Subcontracting for villains, brokering information and research, and rotting away in this damn trailer. I can't leave. I can't ever leave... I want something bought or errands run, I have to call one of his boys. If they're feeling generous, occasionally they let me walk around the trailer park for a bit. Say hi to a neighbor or two. Fucking paradise." He hunched forward, put his head in his hands. After a second, he spoke again. "I've been squirreling away money since day one, and they aren't good enough to catch it. I've got houses in six different states, with subcontractors thinking they work for six different people taking care of them, readying them for my visit, which never comes. I've got a fucking TELEPORTATION DEVICE in my closet, smuggled it in part by part from a tinker contact, and I don't dare use it because if I go off the grid, the AMM WILL find me, and they WILL kill me."

He looked toward the bedroom. Toward the picture on his nightstand, the one taken back before he had his gut, and his hairline had strategically withdrawn from the struggle. The one picture he had left of HER. "Worse, they'll kill more'n just me."

He let that sit for a minute. Then he looked at Devil Dog. "You're here and AMM flunkies haven't kicked the door in, so you dodged the cameras, didn't let the guards see you. That means you're good. You think you can do this? Can take down all of'em?

"Oh, I've got a shot. Wouldn't be here otherwise. But I need things from YOU to make it work, Occam." Devil Dog steepled his hands, considered him over his fingertips.

"I need you to tell me about the local capes. Start with the villains first."

"Um. Alright. You killed my power, I could have pulled up their files-"

"Just give me a summary. I'll stop by for files later."

"Well. There's the AMM, of course. Alamo Memorial Militia. Their founder calls himself General Crockett, though that's an alias. Big separatist, big Texas for Texans type. Got ties back east with Empire Eighty-Eight, mainly due to a shared hatred of anyone who isn't white. They've got a lot of ordnance in an old ranch compound west of town, and about fifty non-powered members who can all shoot, fight, and pretend to be soldiers. Mostly men, women don't get combat training, though they do stuff like chores, and non-combat duties. They've got five capes to their name. Everyman's either a shapeshifter or has illusion powers, effectively a master of disguise. Pilgrim's a teleporter... Theoretically unlimited range to anywhere he can visualize, and a forcefield that surrounds him for a few minutes once he gets there that's impervious to modern weaponry and environmental effects. Thing is, he can only teleport when the force field's down, and he doesn't control when it goes down. Failsafe is a tinker... Kind of. He can't build futuristic things, but he can build, repair, and jury-rig standard devices in about a tenth of the time or less. He tends to use bombs and traps, and keeps the rest of his boys supplied. Big Rig is weird... He can meld with machines, control them like they were his body. Distort them, a bit, too. Turn a car door into a metal mouth, have it bite people, that kind of thing. Then there's that ex-marine, ah, calls himself Semper Fire..." He paused and eyed Devil Dog, who said nothing. Occam continued. "Flame controller and generator. Also seems to be immune to the stuff. That's about all for the AMM... There's also the Graveyard Gang and the Serpent Lodge. Oh, a few independents too. Hang on, I've got a few pictures a source mailed in yesterday..." He moved to the kitchen, grabbed a packet from where it sat atop his mail pile. Checked it over, then nodded as he returned and gave it to Devil Dog.

"We've only got a few independents in town. Mostly villains... A lot of them got scooped up by the three groups, and the ones that didn't, the Protectorate hunted down. Though there are a few that have been competent enough to keep operating thus far."

Devil Dog pulled out a small flashlight, and flicked it on. Occam blinked, rubbed his eyes. He watched as the vigilante flipped through the photos, then paused. He quirked an eyebrow, then turned one to Occam, shifting the flashlight so that he could see.

"Now what is THIS?" He asked.

The photo revealed a chitinous, brown-shelled horror. It stood, somewhat crookedly, on four jointed legs each as tall as a man. A fat, wormlike body ended in a barbed, curved tail, and a humanoid torso covered in armor plates sat on the front of the body. Twin arms ended in crude hands, with three digits apiece. A cluster of uneven plates covered its head, save for two very human eyes peering out from between the armor. A pair of mandibles jutted out shortly below them, and a rasping tongue as long as its stretched fingers was caught mid-lick, flicking out like a serpent. The background seemed to be a parking lot, with the shattered remnants of a Seven-Eleven behind it. The creature was caught in the act of lifting a large pickup truck, readying to throw it at someone outside of the photo.

"That, uh... Well. To be honest, that one might be a bit out of your league..."

The rest of the night sped by, and when he woke in the morning, the vigilante was gone.

Oddly enough, Occam's power didn't bother him for the rest of the day.

And once he got the cables fixed and the electricity restored, he pulled up his email, and wrote a very short message for the address he knew by heart.

Because while hope is a beautiful thing, it never hurts to hedge your bets.

**TO: .net **

**FROM: Razor**

**Subject: Possible compromise. Investigating further.**

He moved his mouse over to the send button, and paused. Stood, and paced for a few minutes, using his power, speculating and tracing the outcomes. Spent a full fifteen minutes, pondering the facts as he knew them.

Then he went to his bedroom, and picked up the picture from his nightstand, and looked at it for another few minutes. Finally, he had to close his eyes.

And when he sat down at the computer again, he made his choice.


	4. Don't Look Back

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon his property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**Don't Look Back**

1512, 05/22/2012 Route 557 east from Sancti

It wasn't sight. It wasn't hearing. It wasn't touch, but some combination of the three, indescribeable to any who couldn't experience it directly. Maria could stretch out her mind, and tell with complete accuracy just where any significant electrical activity bigger than a watch battery was at any given time within a two-block radius of herself. The cruiser's battery was a low purr, and the car's wiring pulsed with a steady heartbeat, lighting up the dashboard and the various other systems of the vehicle. The dashboard camera was truly an inert lump, though occasional sparks tried to tease at its connections, and her partner's cell phone was right where he always kept it, in his pocket. Maria's own cell phone was a familiar hum against her thigh.

Outside, the power lines traced out to her sense against the sky, crackling with strong, steady THRUMS. The occasional building they passed was a hodgepodge of criss-crossing streams, flowing around and through before linking back to the lines. The passing vehicles on the route glowed with minor power, the lightning within caged and ready to be set free.

There were other uses to her power, but this was the most subtle and passive, the least likely to draw notice. Often the most useful. More than once she'd used it to check a building with it before entry... The fact that almost everyone carried cell phones these days had saved her some trouble in a few tense situations.

And as they got further out into the dusty bowl and faded farmhouses that were the eastern side of Sancti, she crumpled up the empty Tapas bag, and dropped it at her feet.

"Hey! Don't get sauce on the floor. I might put my feet there later." Brad mock-snarled but didn't look over, focused on the road ahead.

"Chill, ese." She opened her eyes, and let her power fade. "Okay. I think I remember how this goes."

"Isn't it like riding a bicycle? Always thought stuff like that you don't forget. Everything I read on Parahumans Online said that's how it goes."

She shrugged. In truth, it had been easy to use the electricity sense. Even felt a little good. But she wasn't about to admit that to him, he'd just push her more on it. She'd made her choice years ago.

"I don' know how it works for others, just how it works for me," she muttered. "You go get powers then you tell me how it works."

He snorted. "Yeah, that'd be great. With my luck I'd gain the power to summon rainbows or become the perfect interior designer or something stereotypically stupid."

She punched his shoulder. Lightly, because he was driving. Then she checked the landmarks again, and sighed. "Almost there. Please, please Jesus let the place be empty."

"Gravel road, right? We got a key for the gate?" Brad asked. She shook her head. "Gate rusted out years back. It's a popular make out site these days. We'll just stop and push it open."

She counted her blessings when they pulled up to the swinging gate, at the end of the winding gravel road, that there weren't any cars parked nearby. School was just letting out so it was unlikely any of the local pushers would be using this place yet. Too early.

Around them, the wind howled through the hills. The gravel road wound down into a series of dug out hollows, and mounds of dirt and rock. Back in the sixties, the stone quarry had been a major employer for Sancti. But it had fallen upon hard times, and a few union disputes with a fairly ruthless management had put it deeply into the red by the seventies. The final straw came when they'd dug into a network of caverns under the place, and collapsed a third of the existing digs. The company had walked away from it, and the city had neither the funding nor the inclination to do anything with it beyond salvage what they could from the equipment left behind.

Brad parked the cruiser at the base of the gravel ramp leading back up, and they got out. Sand shifted under Maria's feet, as she looked over the place. Empty, as far as she could see. The remnants of an old crane hanging from a half-collapsed derrick, the girders creaking in the wind, and the hook swaying slowly like a pendulum dowsing water. A couple of aluminum shacks in the process of falling down, and a few slabs of cut granite, waiting for trucks that were long gone. Mounds of dirt breaking up the view here and there, and the occasional burn-mark where some vagrants or trespassing students had built a camp fire.

As they walked, they moved past the detritus of decades of illicit deals, vandalism, dumpers, and tourists. Broken needles glinted around some of the old campsites, and broken glass bottles glittered like gems at the side of one of the sheer cliffs up. Plastic bags and scraps of paper and fast food containers were pushed about by the wind, and old, junker cars with the tires long gone sprawled like lizards basking in the sun. A single couch, gaping tears in its cushions, was propped up in the back of a tilted pickup truck, a throne for some would-be king of the ruins. There was not a soul in sight, and Maria was relieved.

The feeling lasted all of two minutes, until she picked up a tremor at the edge of her power.

"Fuck." She squeezed her eyes shut and felt, moving slowly toward it. Just a few steps.

She heard Brad drew his service pistol, flick the safety off. She raised a hand. "No. It's a generator, is all. A generator and... Heat-lamps."

"Must be a quiet generator. I'm not hearing anything. Still, heat lamps? Someone's growing herb, I reckon. Probably not our man, think we should turn around and leave?"

She gnawed her lip, surveyed the direction her power was tugging her towards. A half-boarded up hole was there, at the bottom of a cliff. It looked like it slanted into and under one of the hills, judging by the darkness. "We better check it out. Besides, if it's stoners, they ain't gonna be here now."

A short walk back to the car, and Brad retrieved the flashlight. She took the shotgun from the trunk, just in case, loading it as they moved up to the hole.

Peering down into it, it descended at a gentle slope of scree and gravel to what looked to be one of the natural caves. Just one hole among the many others around here. It had several nailed wooden boards around the edges, but more were lying at the base of it, clearly weathered by age and knocked loose long ago. A nearby sign was stuck into the ground at an angle, the lettering on it informing passerby to KE P UT.

Brad looked at her. "Your power doesn't detect, oh say, sinkholes yet, or anything that might kill a couple of amateur spelunkers, right?"

She shook her head. "Relax. It's like twenty feet back in there. We go to the entrance, we shine the light in, we leave."

They got there without incident, the slope wasn't too bad going down. Picking their way past rusty-nailed chunks of wood, they peered through the slats.

Sure enough, that close, Maria could hear the quiet chugging of the generator. A small one, then. The flashlight revealed a small diesel rig, painted black. Cords lead from it to what appeared to be three wooden crates, and a reddish light shined from within the slats.

She looked at him and frowned. He was frowning back.

"This isn't weed. You don't put the heat lamps IN the box." He said.

She took the flashlight from him, played it along the cave floor, walls. Sandy and dry. A few scorpions scuttled for cover, but the beam revealed no significant dangers. Beyond the crates, the cave went back and curved into the darkness, swallowing the beam with no effort at all. Her power didn't sense anything else electrical back there at all.

"No. Not weed." She offered him the shotgun. "Cover me while I check it out?"

He shook his head. There was a chauvinistic streak to the man, not a big one, but it showed up whenever she offered to do something dangerous like this. He blamed it on too many John Wayne movies back in the day. "No. You're a better shot anyways. Give that flashlight back." She did so, and took the shotgun, switching out its buckshot for a couple of slugs from the cartridge sling. Impolite to catch your partner in a spray of shot, they tended to get annoyed by that sort of thing.

Brad took the flashlight, and crept forward, inch by inch. Holding it up next to his head, arm cocked, so that anyone firing for center of mass would miss. Theoretically.

He got to the crates without trouble, leaned over them, shone the flashlight down on the contents. Frowned. "They're... Full of straw? I think the lamps are below them. Hang on."

"Hey, don't get stupid now." She glanced around, checking out the part of the quarry she could see from the bowl-shaped pit. Nothing.

"Relax." He tucked the flashlight under his arm and reached into a pocket. Judging by the motions she could see him doing, he was sliding a glove onto his hand. Finally he finished, juggled the flashlight back to a useful position, and knelt down. Shining it in the box, he carefully started removing the straw. After a few seconds, he paused.

"There's some kind of bag in here. Leather? Maybe. Got a lot of straw on it, I think I can..."

He lifted it, and shone the beam on it. It looked all the world like a wobbling, hairy testicle with straw instead of pubes. The straw obscured it so much it was difficult to see, and he shifted the flashlight again as he used his mostly-free hand to pull straw from it. "Fuck, this is sticky. I don't know what-" He stopped.

"Brad?"

"I got some of it on my hand. Shit." He pulled his free hand loose... Or rather, he tried to. The bag came with it. He pulled harder, used his gloved hand to grab the straw, give it a good wrench, and most of it gave way, as the bag suddenly snapped against his bare forearm, with a SQUELCHING noise as it stuck.

"The hell?" He reached for it again, paused. "Well, okay. This is weird." He took his flashlight carefully out from the crook of his arm with his gloved hand, shined it on the gooey, whitish/translucent lump adhering to his right arm. Black flecks were sprinkled throughout it, each of them roundish and about the size of a speedball. "Okay, I don't know what this is."

Maria's eyes went wide.

"Brad."

"What? Give me a minute. I think I can pull this loose." He reached out for the lump, grabbed a roll of it, and pulled. The glove ripped off of his hand, now attached to the mass as well.

"Brad. Get back here. Now."

"Alright, alright, I... Wait. Did you hear that?"

"Brad. Back out of there. Slowly. That's an egg sack."

Brad had froze. "Oh shit. I've seen this movie. Oh shit, I'M THAT GUY!"

"Brad, you need to GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!"

He sprinted to the entrance, as a weird, wailing hiss burbled from deeper in the darkness. Rocks shifted, sand ground, as SOMETHING made its presence known. Brad bolted from the tunnel as a distant Tak, tak, TAKTAKTAK noise started up back in the cave. The sound of many monstrous legs, moving in a staccato step.

Brad burst into the light, the white mass wobbling on his arm as he dropped the flashlight and hit the side of the pit, using his hands to claw himself up. Dust and grit billowed around the mass, coating it and adhering to the stickiness. Probably a good thing, Maria thought as she threw the shotgun out of the pit, then followed behind Brad, clawing and climbing and praying, PRAYING that she wouldn't fall.

They struggled to the top as IT surged out of the cave mouth, ripping through the boards as if they were balsa wood and straightening up in the light of the sun. Dark brown chitin gleamed as a tail that could punch through concrete blocks straightened out, and presented a three-foot-long stinger to the world. It balanced itself on four chitinous legs, and twisted a somewhat human-like torso around to face them.

Maria scrambled back, retrieved the shotgun, and the thing took three fast steps forward, its eyes tiny in proportion to its frame but human nonetheless, and full of anger. She held her arms up, holding the shotgun in her hand, and shook her head. "We're sorry! We're sorry! We're going! Just let us go! We don't want trouble!"

It stood there for a second, lashed its tail. Considering, pondering. Then an arm came up and a clawlike hand pointed at her, pointed up and out of the quarry. The message was simple.

Go.

She turned and ran, pushing Brad in front of her as she went... Taking care to keep herself between Brad's junked up arm and the horror from the cave. She knew how this would go, and if they didn't get FAR, FAR AWAY, before the monster realized what they'd done, then they were going to die.

"Oh jesus, oh jesus, oh jesus..." Brad chanted as he ran, probably unaware he was even doing it. "I didn't know it could lay EGGS."

"Me either! Keep running!"

It was a testament, to the sick sense of humor that appeals to mankind in general, that the mute and terrifying parahuman that had surfaced years ago in Corpus Christi and caused a hell of a lot of property damage, had been given the name that it had. The media had given it the name "Scorpus Christi", and it had stuck. It was good for a snigger to folks who never had to get within arm's reach of the damned thing.

Scorpus Christi wasn't fazed much by bullets. It could shred steel and concrete with its bare claws, move WAY too quickly with those skittering legs, and had no real compunction about killing or crippling anyone who tried to stop it. It could dig through dirt and sand at a decent clip, probably didn't need to breathe, and was fairly aggressive in stressful situations. It had surfaced now and again throughout the region, usually stealing things or causing destruction for no reasons anyone could tell. Local heroes had tried to stop it, but it would usually scuttle off at top speed or burrow away when it started losing.

But worse, perhaps the most horrible thing of all, to Maria? Eggs. There was a female in there, somewhere. A woman. She'd been someone, before she got whatever cursed power had twisted her into THAT.

They'd just passed the couch, when Brad started to slow. Maria kept going, started past him. "KEEP MOVING!"

"What? It's letting us go!"

"KEEP MOVING!" She grabbed his free arm, pulled until he got the notion. Maria knew that the trouble was NOT over yet.

And as they reached the car, she piled into the driver's side, and barely waited until Brad's ass hit the seat before she peeled out, leaving him to swear and shut the door. And sure enough, as they ground their way up the ramp out, a horrible, chittering CRY rose from back in the quarry.

"You took an eggsack," Maria said. "You took her BABIES."

Brad looked at the gooey, dusty, mass on his arm. He tugged on the glove sticking out of it, it didn't budge. "It was an accident," he whispered. He'd gone pale.

"I don' think she cares!" They hit the road out, as a cloud of dust rose behind them. Maria hit the gate out full on, sending it flying back and probably denting the hell out of the front grille, but she was beyond caring. Sure as hell, a brown, jagged collection of limbs and bug-like bits and anger was charging down the road after them.

"Call it in," she told him. She needed her full attention on the road ahead.

Brad grabbed the radio and made the call, as she whipped the cruiser into a screeching drift onto the main route, and roared back towards Sancti.

It didn't stop when they hit the main route.

It didn't slow down, either.

And slowly, it started growing in the rearview mirror.


	5. Mexican Standoff

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon her property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**Mexican Standoff**

1529, 05/22/2012 Route 557 west from Sancti

Lights flashing, siren blaring, bumper half-off and hanging, the Crown Victoria patrol cruiser roared down the two-lane road, weaving desperately around traffic at roughly ninety miles per hour. SUVs, cars, and pickup trucks in its path and wake desperately twisted to the side, screeching into the medians or into minor collisions of their own as they fought to avoid crashing.

They were the lucky ones.

About five hundred feet back and gaining every second, Scorpus Christi was bounding down the blacktop, hurtling straight ahead and matching the patrol car's speed. The creature didn't stop for slower traffic, either barrelling through the smaller cars or trampling over the larger ones, claws pounding through thin roofs, immense weight leaving deep dents in the metal of the sturdier ones.

Fortunately for Maria's peace of mind, most of the traffic in her path was pulling clear, in order to dodge the patrol car.

It moved like a Harryheusen stop-motion creature, some horror from the old movies, but accelerated to a speed that made its flashing legs hard to track, almost hypnotic. Brad watched it, bile in his throat, and a quiver in his hands. He'd finished calling it in, but there wasn't much else to do but hang on and track the monster behind them. And watch it grow closer, second by second. He wasn't a coward, his father had beat THAT out of him, but god damn, that thing was a nightmare. And it was coming after HIM.

He took three deep breaths, and tore his eyes away from its high-speed shambling. After collecting himself, he looked back at it again. Well, if he was going to die, he might as well try to ruin its day.

He tried to retrieve the shotgun from where Maria had dropped it, but gave it up after a second. His right arm still had the gooey eggsack attached to it. Even though it was covered in grime, dirt, and the last of the straw, there was too much chance of sticking it to the window or windowframe, or hell, even the shotgun itself. Besides, the recoil would make it damn near impossible to work.

Hell, the shotgun would probably just piss it off more. Guns weren't much against this, they'd need heavier artillery.

He looked over at Maria. "Your powers?"

She jerked the wheel around a tractor-trailer rig, narrowly dodged a Hell's Angel, and weaved back into the hollow between two minivans. Not four seconds later, Scorpus Christi hurtled up, running ALONG the trailer, and leaped over the tractor, hitting the ground running and continuing pursuit. "No!" She shouted. "Can't concentrate now DRIVING!"

The radio crackled to life. "Navarrez, Kent. Exit 32, get to Del Mundo. Proceed to Del Mundo and await backup."

"Backup? Copy." He killed the radio, buried his face in his left hand. "Please god let this be the Protectorate. Please god let this be the Protectorate..." Kent was surveying the traffic as he chanted, Maria frowned. Del Mundo was an old grocery store, off by itself down a dusty spur of road from exit 32. It was a large, rectangular building that had been emptied long ago, save for shelves and a few bits of furnishings not worth taking. "Why there?" She asked.

"No one around to hurt! Besides us, anyway. Please god let this be the protectorate.."

They took the exit at about sixty miles an hour, tires squealing as the ramp curved around. Behind them Scorpus Christi was forced to slow her scuttling, twist and curve up the berm next to the ramp.

She gained about two hundred feet, before the patrol car could straighten out and accelerate. Maria was worried about the grinding now coming from the hood... That damn oil leak, she thought. If we throw a cylinder here-

It was four miles down the road to Del Mundo, past a convenience mart, a couple of fast food places, and a single antique gas station. The old store stood alone with only cracked and empty lot around it, and a few miles of scrubland behind it. Fortunately, the traffic was light enough that they could go all out, and she didn't bother tracking the speed as they took the turn into Del Mundo's y lot so hard that the leftmost tires left the ground. The front right tire BURST, and skidding and squealing, the car fishtailed savagely, as she jammed on the brakes. They ended up a mere twenty feet from the dark glass doors.

When it slowed, she glanced back to see Scorpus slow down, start decelerating and curving inward. "GO! GET INSIDE," She yelled at Brad. He paused for a split-second, that shadow of machismo crossing his face again... Then Scorpus made it to the edge of the lot, and he nodded. "Get clear!" He called, then shoved the door open and bolted for the store.

Mary gunned the cruiser again, started a narrow turn to try and face Scorpus, but the shredded tire was slowing her down. Before she could get up any speed, Scorpus loped up to the driver's side, and jammed a single clawed hand THROUGH the door.

Pain lanced through Maria's leg as something tore at them, and she gasped, but then Scorpus caught at the door, and pulled as the car swerved away, and ripped the door free with a squeal of metal. Maria felt her leg with her free hand, and felt a slick of blood starting to spread... No time to tell how bad it was.

Then the view shifted. She lurched against her seatbelt as the car stopped moving, and the car tilted forward, and down. The view from the windshield was filled with pavement, and old, faded yellow lines.

She looked behind her, to see that Scorpus had grabbed the back of the car and lifted it free of the ground.

Maria took her foot off the gas, but the bug-woman kept lifting, and she had a moment's flash of clarity.

She's going to turn it over on its belly, like a kid with a turtle.

There was a distant crash of glass breaking, but Maria didn't have time to concern herself with that. She let go of the wheel, hunched down as far as she could, and threw her arms up to shield her head from the impact.

It was actually gentler then she thought it would be. She heard the lights crack as they were crushed, but Scorpus wasn't putting any real force behind it. Instead of being thrown into the roof, she felt her arms slam it hard enough to leave a bruise, but not enough for any serious damage. At least, that's what it felt like. No time to check.

Or was there? She opened her eyes, as the car rocked back and forth a bit before settling. She took a risk and popped the seat belt, using her arms to safely hit the bottom, and looked around.

And straight through the gaping hole where the door used to be at the glaring eyes of Scorpus Christi. The parahuman was leaning over, sinuously draping her humanlike torso parallel with the ground, her face not more than three feet from Maria's.

She froze. Some distant part of her mind noted that Scorpus had some sort of tattoo-like mark between two Chitinous plates where her forehead should be. It looked almost like the letter U. Funny, the things you notice when death is three feet away, she thought.

The monstrous parahuman's gaze looked her over with cold disdain. Then it flicked past her, and gave a cursory glance over the interior of the car.

Maria closed her eyes, and heard a rustling as she did. When she opened them again, Scorpus wasn't in her field of vision.

She twisted around, and through the passenger window, she could see Scorpus moving toward Del Mundo, stalking toward a newly-broken pane of glass in one of the doors. She was moving carefully, as if she expected an ambush. The thought made Maria snort with hysterical humor. SHE was worried about being ambushed?

If she got to Brad, Maria rather thought he wouldn't get off as easily as SHE had.

That thought let her focus. She took three deep breaths, squinted her eyes, and stretched forth with her power.

The store itself was dark, no surprise. The car's wiring had been torn up, but there was still a little bit there.

The power lines on the road, though... She could work with that, if she were careful. Yes, that would work. Hopefully.

There were three parts to her power. The first part of her power was a sensitivity to electricity, and that she could use easily, it was about as complicated as breathing.

The second part was trickier, and it required her to see what she was doing. Especially now, when the overturned car was between the power lines and her target.

As Scorpus lashed her tail out to burst two more panes of glass, a crackling bolt of lightning flared into existence, licking out from the power lines and slamming into Scorpus Christi's backside!

The parahuman was blown through the glass doors, and Maria blinked as she lost sight of her.

Had it been that simple? No. No, it couldn't have been. Carefully, she started grabbing more power from the line, letting it pool up at a good point. She had to be careful. When she'd used this one time in the past, she'd ended up taking too much and doing too much damage to the circuit. It had blown a few transformers along the line.

Back then it had been an inconvenience. Now it would probably be fatal. The lines were the only significant source of electricity within her reach at the minute. If she blew them up, she'd be defenseless.

She watched. A minute crawled by, then two. Her leg throbbed and she spared it a glance... It was bleeding pretty badly, but not arterial badly. She jerked her belt off, cinched it around her thigh as best she could. About the time she glanced back up, Scorpus Christi burst out of Del Mundo, shattering the last of the glass doors, leaving a gaping black hole into the building. Maria readied another bolt... And froze.

Scorpus was clutching Brad in one hand.

She held the bolt, cycling, waiting for release, but didn't dare fire. The lightning would kill him. Scorpus glared around, looking for the assailant who had struck it, finding nothing.

Then it hoisted Brad's flailing form up, to consider his trapped arm. And the egg scack glued to it. Brad was kicking at her, kicking at Scorpus' head, accomplishing nothing but struggling nonetheless.

Scorpus considered him for a moment, then reached out with her free hand, and grabbed his shoulder.

She's going to rip his arm off! Maria closed her eyes. The bolt wasn't going to work, time to try her last trick. Quickly!

Her thoughts were interrupted by an inhuman scream! She jerked her head over, and saw Scorpus staggering around on her ungainly legs, rubbing her crude hands all over her face. Brad was on the ground a distance away, scrambling to get to his feet and out of there.

What had happened?

And then her eyes fell on the small cannister in his free hand, as he pelted toward the squad car. Pepper Spray!

He'd pepper sprayed Scorpus Christi!

Maria didn't know whether or not to laugh, but then Brad was on his knees, tugging at her. She shook her head. "No time! Get around the building! Hide while she's blind!"

He shook his head right back, tried to drag her free. Her wounded leg caught, and she gasped. "There's a funnel cloud on the horizon. Calvary's here..."

She shook his arm off. "The spray won't last. You know how tough she is. Go. I'm going to stall her."

The lightning was still cycling, cycling. The last bolt had surprised the monstrous parahuman, but hadn't done any damage that she could see. Well, she still had one more card to play...

Brad nodded, ran. And Maria closed her eyes and SHIFTED her perspective. INTO the cycling current.

And the world ceased to exist as everything went dark for a second, and then was lit by a thousand colors no ordinary human could ever hope to see. Maria WAS the current, and she was trapped in a shell of black deadness, but only for a second. The path the last bolt had traced was still open, and she leaped out, losing only a little energy...

...And a vaguely human form made entirely of crackling lightning leaped out of the power lines, and darted with unearthly speed to the middle of the parking lot. Ten feet tall, it lifted arm-like flashes of electricity, and readied to fight. Maria looked from its eyes, seeing not the raw, crude matter around her, but the twisting of energy of all sorts... The heat radiating from the lot formed a solid blanket that she'd sunk her new body's feet into. The wrecked cruiser was a small network of veinlike wires, with a little battery heart at the core of it. Her own, very frail human body was a tiny, tiny glint where bioelectricity shot through the nerves... Nothing she could control or use, but just big enough to see. And Scorpus Christi was a haphazard tracery of the same.

Good.

I can see enough of her to hit.

She willed her lightning form to charge the beast, slammed INTO it. The weird bonding that held her form together solidified the lightning somehow. Seperated it into layers, like the membrane around a water droplet. She had mass enough to hurt, and the creature was bowled over again, claws flying from its face. It rolled to its feet, fast, but Maria jumped on her, raining blows down upon her head and torso with flickering speed. Each blow sparked and the scorpion woman jerked slightly as volts coursed through her, as the layers just below made contact through the harder outer layer, briefly. Each punch would feel like a max-strength taser, but Scorpus didn't seem more than pained by it.

The energy was taken from Maria's form, and just as swiftly replenished by the power lines. She could pull deeper for a stronger form, or to charge up her fists, but that would put pressure on the circuits as it always did.

No, she thought. All I have to do is stall her.

She drove Scorpus backward toward the building again. The monster was warding her head with her claws, and shrugging off most of the other hits. Finally, she started counterattacking. Maria evaded the claw strikes, but the tail punched into her with unearthly speed, at about chest level. Piercing Maria's deepest, purest layers of power.

The effect was instantaneous.

About half of the electricity balled into Maria's fighting form expended in a microsecond, with a massive thunderclap and flash! She felt her form shrink to a much shorter size, and let it. For one microsecond, Scorpus Christi was a conduit between Maria's lightning and the ground.

Again, the monstrous parahuman was hurled backwards into the Del Mundo, smoking and spasming this time. Maria could see that several nerves in her tail were disrupted... Usually a sign of damage or scrambled, she knew from experience. She grimaced. This sort of thing could cause permanent damage, when it happened. Still, she couldn't work up much sympathy. Scorpus had nearly torn Brad's arm off.

She slowly stalked into the darkness, following her foe. Dark, light, it didn't matter, the nerve pattern glowed just the same to her not-sight.

And through her human ears, she heard a roaring sound. Something like a freight train, careening down a track. Finally!

Scorpus took her time clambering to her feet. When she did, she scuttled to keep her distance from Maria. She was limping a bit, her tail dragging slightly, but still as fast as ever. Maria feinted a few times, then ducked as Scorpus abruptly picked up a stack of wrecked shelves, and heaved them her way. Metal could be problematic...

The creature bolted out the door the second that Maria was out of her way, and she chased after... And stopped. Maria smiled to herself, and switched to her human eyes for a second.

A two-story tornado was in the middle of dispersing, at the edge of the parking lot. From it, two figures stepped out, stripping off rebreather masks as they walked towards the building. One of them was a middle-aged man, clean shaven save for a bush mustache, with hard blue eyes and greying hair. He wore a tan duster, with a simple silver star pinned to it. A stetson, a pair of spurred boots, and twin holstered pistols completed the look. He had a large rifle of some sort slung over his shoulder, almost as tall as he was. This was Marshal, the senior Protectorate member in Sancti. The rifle was new. Special equipment for this problem?

The second one wore a blue jumpsuit, with thin metallic tracings all over it. She was short, thin, and brown-haired with a basic pageboy cut, and grinning maniacally. Her mask covered the top of her face, but left the jaw exposed. She could have been anywhere from twenty to thirty, it was hard to tell. Her gloves were three sizes too large from her, and looked to be made of jointed metal, with winking LEDs of red and green along their lengths. This was Wiretap, the team's resident field tinker.

And behind them the tornado finished dispersing, as a rain of dust pattered down and coalesced into a third figure. Male, nude, bald, and sexless, it flowed forward like a djinn with a human upper torso, arms, and face, and everything below the waist a field of vapor and dirt. Dust Devil.

She sighed, taking a second to rub her leg. Still bleeding. No wonder she was feeling a bit light-headed. That wasn't all relief, she was probably going to need serious bandaging, before too long.

Well. Best help them finish this up quickly, then. She closed her eyes, focused back on her energy form, which started moving again.

The second she stirred, Scorpus, who had been looking back and forth between the old threat and the new, scampered catty-cornered to the side of the lot. Maria strode forward, crackling with each step as she pulled more power from the lines to replace what had been lost. She grew as she moved, until she was back to about eight feet tall.

Marshal stopped, pointed at the downed car. Wiretap nodded, started sidling that way. Dust Devil flowed out between Scorpus and the car, moving with a speed not unlike her own. He had nerves of a sort, too... His were just like glittering tiny pellets scattered through his form. He smiled and waved at her as he went. "Hey! Sparky! Good to see you!"

She couldn't talk in this form, and she wouldn't have anyway. Too much was at stake if she did that. She settled for giving him a slight wave, keeping her sight firmly on Scorpus.

"Alright there, Scorpus." Marshal was speaking. He'd shipped the big gun from his shoulder. It reminded her of photos she'd seen once, of world-war era anti-tank rifles. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Do me a solid, take the easy way. We can help you. We can get you shelter, safety. Place where no one'll hurt ya. All you gotta do is surrender. I'd rightly appreciate that, sir. Ain't no need for this to get viol-

At about that point, Scorpus skittered to the side, ripped up the remnants of an old bike rack, and threw it with savage strength at Marshal.

Maria winced. Oh, that was absolutely the WORST thing to do.

Sure enough, the bike rack almost seamlessly swerved 180 degrees without losing a single bit of momentum, and slammed into Scorpus, sending her staggering back.

Marshal was a limited telekinetic. His power could only affect objects in motion, and it couldn't add or subtract force to an object's velocity.

What it COULD do, was alter a trajectory to any vector he pleased, without altering its velocity, even if it caused the object to blatantly disregard several laws of physics and various natural forces.

Marshal pulled out a bullet the size of his forearm, slotted it into the rifle with a CHUNK, as Scorpus recovered. "All right then. We do this the hard way! Y'all can surrender any time, just raise yer... Claws."

Meanwhile, Maria felt tugging back at her human body. She let her head loll, kept her eyes closed. Easier to control her energy form that way, and she was less likely to give away her secret like this. She heard Wiretap whisper, almost inaudibly. "Looks like we found Navarrez. She's down, still breathing. Ambulance is coming, I'm cutting her loose. Keep ugly busy, I'll get her clear then scout for Kent."

She managed a convincing groan, as she heard small, slithering noises around her. She cracked an eye, curious. She'd seen Wiretap work on TV, but never this close. Sure enough, the short tinker had one gauntleted arm stuck into the car, and from it several wires extruded, glittering and almost invisible. They slithered around Maria, and snapped, never touching her once. Slowly, the various objects and obstacles that were trapping her in the car fell to pieces, one by one.

Wiretap specialized in, well, wires of all sorts. Including wires that could shock, wires that could control machinery and electronics, and wires so fine and strong that they could cut through just about anything. Like the random wrecked parts of a Crown Vic that were holding her place.

She was probably as safe as she was going to get right now, so she focused back on her energy form.

Scorpus was pacing, trying to find a good vantage point for a charge through the heroes. Dust Devil was darting around her back, staying paralell to her, and keeping her from bolting out of the parking lot. Marshal simply stood where he was, aiming the rifle. Why? She'd declined surrender. Then it struck Maria. Marshall was stalling because of HER, delaying so that Wiretap could get Maria free, and off the scene. Out of danger.

It was damn near impossible not to like Marshal. Still, Scorpus was managing, somehow.

Maria's energy form stirred from the rubble of the store, and the others flicked a glance at her. And as if she had been the catalyst to action, Scorpus charged Marshall!

Maria surged forward, but Marshall was quicker. The gun fired, sending him a few steps back with the recoil, and Scorpus' head snapped back! She stopped cold, and her upper torso seemed to jerk, and shudder, as if it was taking hits from all directions... Finally she stopped, and something rebounded from her, and bounced off of the ground, finally rolling to a stop a distance away.

A rubber bullet?

Marshall had fired the bullet, caught it on the rebound, and slammed it into her at a different angle, then repeated it again. Over and over until it lost momentum to the point that it wasn't damaging anymore.

Scorpus twitched, swayed, used an arm to brace herself, then launched herself forward again... And Maria was there, between them. Scorpus skidded to a halt, and Maria cracked her across the face. Lightning flared, and the woman staggered back, tail twitching.

Then Dust devil roared between them, around them, kicking up a cloud and buffeting Scorpus with wind blasts. They didn't seem to inconvenience her much, but the dust blinded her, set her withdrawing.

Another WHUMP, and the dust dropped in just that second, and Scorpus was battered by a second bullet. She fell, and this time she didn't get up.

Marshall started to approach, but Maria held up a glowing hand. The nerves around Scorpus' head seemed to be close enough to human, and judging by how they were working, she was still awake. Playing possum.

Well, thought Maria. Time to end this anyhow. She took one of these before, so this shouldn't kill her...

Dimly she was aware of her human form being carefully extracted from the car. Pain blurred her concentration, so she decided to go with it. Leaning over, she placed both hands on Scorpus' main body. Alarmed, the chitinous form struggled to get back up, but it was too late.

Maria discharged half her energy THROUGH Scorpus, straight into the ground.

Scorpus convulsed, twitching, and finally slumped over, legs, arms, torso, and tail curling up into a vaguely fetal pose. Maria pulled back and checked her nerves again... Yes. She was still very much alive, but quite out. The combination of the beating from the bullets and the buildup from the shocks had done the trick.

"It safe?" Asked Marshall. She nodded, but Dust Devil spoke. "Yeah. She's breathing slower. Think she's out proper this time."

She felt dumb. Of course the guy who was made out of air could tell stuff like that.

She blinked again, and noticed that she was seeing double through her human eyes. Uh oh.

"Well. Reckon that's one more we owe ya, pardner." Marshall was walking forward, tipping his hat to her lightning form. Maria felt like laughing, choked it down. Noises in the distance, a siren? Running feet... She jerked her head around. Brad had come out from hiding, was running over to where Wiretap had dragged her. But Marshall was talking, and she was curious to hear what he had to say. She focused on listening through her energy form.

"Listen. I'll be frank, son. We need you on the team. City's gettin' rougher every day, and for every villain we take in, three more spring up. I know you want to help. I know you got what it takes. I don't know what's holdin' ya back, but I promise you, we can help. What do ya say?"

Maria, fading fast, sighed.

She felt guilty. She had her reasons, she'd made her choice, but still...

She let the humanoid figure go, let the borrowed current trickle back into the wires, until it was returned to its rightful place. She'd probably browned out a few streets with that.

"Hey!" Brad was yelling. "Dammit! Maria, stay with me! Come on, eyes open!" He was fiddling with her wound, ripping the pants even more. Trying to cinch the belt.

She heard the ambulance roll into the lot, and the sirens cut out as the doors slammed open.

Good, she thought. I can faint now.

And so she did.


	6. Don't Fear the Reaper

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon her property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**Don't Fear the Reaper**

1535, 05/22/2012 The Macahuitl Club

The Macahuitl club was Sancti's biggest hotspot for the young, the rebellious, the emo, and the goth. Well, what was left of the goth, anyway. Steampunk had been on the rise for the last few years, and the local scene had gotten more varied for it. Less black, more brown and brass.

One could argue that the Macahuitl club was Sancti's ONLY hotspot for those sort of crowds, and one would be accurate, for the most part. The owners of the club had targeted their demographics with experience, mixed in just enough drug trade to be a honeypot for the dumb rich kids who thought life was too boring to get by with only one chemical state of mind, and just enough bouncers to keep SERIOUS problems from happening, while still guaranteeing a slow enough response time that violence and injury were a possibility. The local church groups had picketed it ten times in the last three years, and it was only still around due to copious and well-placed bribes and targeted blackmail against the town's movers and shakers.

Inside, it had a pseudo-Aztec feel, with slabs of black stone scattered around like monoliths, and an altarlike block up on the stage. Leering faces protruded from high above, to gaze down on the dance floor. When the music got going, sometimes they'd trigger the lights in the eyes, and the animatronics that made the mouths move. In a recent nod to the Steampunk wave, they'd had more exposed pipes put in, along with a shitload of clockwork that looked cool but didn't actually do anything.

Really, the club was a work of art. Grim was inordinately proud of it. He smiled to himself as he dusted down the counters, checked the taps. It gave him something to do that involved normal people. That was always a problem in the parahuman community, was losing focus. You get into the fighting, and the crimes, and the rivalries, and all that crap, and the next thing you know you lose your frame of reference with Johnny Q. Public. You find yourself tuning out the whiners who only had to deal with girlfriends breaking up with them, or you sneer at teenagers who are down because their buddy thought injecting a triple dose of cocaine into his femoral artery was a good idea and his funeral was on friday. Or a thousand countless other things. And you couldn't bloody well say "Yeah, it's so unfair your parents want you to work over the summer. By the way kid, I saw my best friend get roasted alive by Behemoth, while I was trying to recover the downed bodies of the rest of my team before they died," or "Huh, I'm sorry to hear you crashed daddy's Lexus. Did you now that Jack Slash once carved every bit of flesh from my bones, to see if I'd heal that? He started from the inside out, so I could feel every bit of it until he got to the brain."

Empathy. Really, it was all about the empathy. If you couldn't help people with their problems by giving them an ear when they needed it, well what good were you as a human being?

Speaking of which, he'd have to wear the cowl tonight. His ears hadn't grown back in yet, after he'd run into Semper Fire a week or so ago. Annoying, they were always one of the last things to heal. Them and the nose, but he had a good prosthetic for that. Fake ears never looked RIGHT.

He'd been seriously worried when the goth scene started fading, until zombies got big. ZOMBIES. Man, who freaking knew? So long as the Walking Dead was on the air, he had a shot at getting away with light costuming. But once that was done, he'd have to get more creative.

"Grim."

He glanced over, saw Tombstone walking out of the stairwell to the apartments above. She had her makeup off, he noticed.

Tombstone was a tall, thin woman dressed in a simple black suit, with a slim, wide-brimmed felt hat atop her flowing silver hair. She wore coke-bottle sunglasses, to hide albino-like red eyes. Every inch of skin he could see on her was the whitest shade of white, with faded blue vein-like structures visible under the flesh. Flesh that he knew was about as hard as marble. She weighed about seven-hundred pounds, give or take a dime. Most of the furnishings here were reinforced for her weight.

She usually wore flesh-toned makeup when she was out of the apartments. Those were the rules, after all. True, it was way before opening hours, but she'd never broken them before. Something was up.

"Need something?" He asked, taking off his bartender's apron.

"Friend of mine's got trouble. Got some... Babies I need to save. Come with?"

He tried to raise an eyebrow, before remembering that the skin was still off his skull above his eyes. He settled for tilting his head. "Babies? Doesn't sound like any friend of yours I know."

She grimaced, showing perfectly square, perfectly identical teeth. "You don't. It was before I joined up. She ended up here too. Look, time's wasting and you're better at driving. Can you?"

He nodded. Perfect example, really. Always a shoulder to lean on, always a helping hand. Always the team den mother.

And so they'd never turn on him, even if his powers were weak. Even if he wasn't as strong as Glom, or as tough as Tombstone, or as flexible and creative as Maggot. He was good old Grim, the one they all liked, and so he was really the only choice for leader that everyone could agree on.

"Sure. Cover up, meet me out back. I'll get the hummer ready."

Out back was the chain-fenced lot that held employees' vehicles. Three minutes later, she was patting flesh-toned makeup on as she walked to the car. He was waiting, leaning on the hood, baseball cap pulled low over his face, prosthetic nose in place. A mullet wig completed the look, but he had a pair of overalls on just to be sure. Better people get a laugh at the hick, then see what was under the disguise.

He opened the door, sat his lanky frame into the driver's seat. Set a trombone case in the backseat. She opened the opposite door, folded herself in. The hummer creaked and settled a bit.

Glad we sprung for the military model, he thought. The civilian one was a piece of crap on a good day. "So. Tell me what we're dealing with, here."

He glanced over at him, eyes unreadable behind the lenses. "You know Scorpus Christi? She and I escaped from the same place."

"She?" He hadn't thought of the bug-thing as having a gender. Made sense, now that he considered it. Weren't female scorpions supposed to be bigger, more aggressive?

His hand felt the key, turned it. "So what-

The world went white, then black.

After some time passed, he felt pain return to his body. Oh HELL, he thought.

Pain and burning. Actual burning. Fire! His nerves were a mess, and his eyes weren't there yet, so he couldn't tell how bad it was. But he figured if there was fire, he'd best be elsewhere. He flailed around, heard thumping noises that meant his limbs were still working, and did his best to try to pull himself out of the fire.

Grim's main power was limited, but very effective. He had total regeneration. No matter what kind of damage he took, he could heal from it. Within seconds, or less. Nobody had ever found a way to kill him permanently... Cut him into pieces, and one of those pieces would regenerate most of a new Grim in seconds. Burn him, and out of the ashes he'd rise up, charred and nude.

The problem was, that his power started fast, and slowed down quickly. Major stuff like the bones, brain, heart, eyes, nerves... All those healed superfast. But after they were taken care of, the rest started slowing down. Tendons took about half a minute. Muscles recovered in the span of a few minutes, but didn't get back up to where they had been for days. Things like skin, toes, ears? Those took at least a week, sometimes two.

"Gog dammt", he cursed, tasting pain on his tongue as something crunched, and he fell forward, out of the fire. Immediately the blackness was replaced by thin streaks of brightness, that swirled together, finally joined and weaved together into a coherent picture. He had sight again. Eyes were up. He turned his head gingerly... Good, the muscles weren't too roasted. God dammit! He'd been intact for a WEEK! All that work getting things healed up again, ruined. He didn't even want to see what his face looked like now. Probably bare skull. Again.

He turned his head. The hummer was a flaming ruin. A car bomb? What the hell?

Motion in the flames, then Tombstone crawled her way out, dragging the warped and flaming trombone case with her. Her clothes were tattered ruins, her makeup had bubbled away, and her glasses were gone, but aside from a few black smudges on her skin she was fine. And she was PISSED.

She tossed the trombone case at his feet and it split, revealing black and silver metal inside. He tried sitting up, managed. His legs weren't working though, they'd apparently been pretty well fried. Well, I can work around that, he thought.

He stretched a hand out toward the case.

CRACK!

Tombstone fell over, white chips flying from her head. She was up again in a heartbeat, looking around. CRACK! Her head snapped back again, and more chips flaked off. She crouched low, grabbed Grim and used him as a shield as she peered around. Idly, he noticed thin, watery blue stuff seeping from her head wounds. He'd only seen that when she'd been seriously damaged before. Normal bullets wouldn't do it, the shooter had to be using-

CRACK!

Grim cursed as he felt a hammer punch in his abdomen, and Tombstone grunted behind him. "AP rounds!" he rasped. "Get to cover!" She dropped him and scrambled.

He took the opportunity to reach over into the trombone case, and pull out his scythe. Taking a second, he assembled it, locked the blade in place, before using it as a support to stand.

All right. Fucker wants to play? Let's play!

CRACK!

That one went through his head. He staggered, but his brain was healed before he could drop.

Not gonna work, kiddo!

Grim had one more power, that was most useful when his legs weren't working right. Simply put, he could fly.

He used it now, surging into the air as fast as he could go.

CRACK!

Nothing. Ha! Sniper boy hadn't expected that!

He took a second to lock the scythe on the chain into his collar bone, punching the hard metal spiked ring into place with its usual pain. Now his enemy would have to rip him apart to disarm him.

Below him, he saw Tombstone poke her head out from a low wall, point toward the empty garage across the street. A glint of metal on the roof, a form lying down, a rifle tracking him... He whirled as he went, and the next shot missed him.

He charged full tilt, and the form straightened up, dropped the rifle, and settled into a fighting stance.

This guy for real? Thought Grim. Ah well, plenty of time ask him what his damage is when he's bleeding out.

Grim finished the charge, whipped the scythe around, and the guy threw himself back, off the edge of the roof.

The hell? For a second, Grim saw something in the guy's hand...

Four distant CRUMPS, from the corner of the roof. Four cannisters flying up into the air.

Four explosions, from all around him.

This time when he came to, he could hear sirens in the distance. He looked around, felt things clicking and grating against his spine as he did so. His torn and mangled body was riddled with large spikes of shrapnel. He felt his power press against them and push some of the smaller ones out, but the bigger ones were in there pretty good.

Well, fuck. I think he got my spine.

He levitated himself up, arms and legs unresponsive, and the scythe's cable trailing under him like a waterski towline. Flying gingerly towards the edge of the roof, he poked his head over the edge where the guy had fallen.

Below he saw an old, stained mattress, and a pile of cardboard boxes, mostly smashed. He scowled. Well, as best you can without any lips.

Behind him, a noise of stone on stone. He turned, to see Tombstone pulling herself up to the roof. She looked him over, shook her head.

"That bad?"

"Worse. The sniper?"

"Gone. Dunno where he went."

She moved to the center of the roof, ignoring the creaking of the tar-slicked, shrapnel-strewn surface. Kicked at the remnants of a black tarp, painted to match the top of the roof. A pair of water bottles rolled away, and something else glinted in the sun. The dropped rifle.

She picked it up and examined it, and scowled.

"What?" Grim asked, feeling pain as more shrapnel worked its way out.

She flipped the rifle over, showed him the stock of the gun. Just a hunting rifle, nothing special about it... Save for the elaborate wooden cross carved in the stock.

He closed his eyes. Well, tried to. No eyelids. He settled for grunting. "Great. Been a while since THEY hit us. How'd they find out about this place anyway?"

She shook her head. "Dunno, seems a little obvious to me. Not sure it's them... No time to discuss it now. Sirens are getting closer, we need to go. You know the rules."

He did know the rules. He'd made most of them. First one being, don't bring more attention to the club. Most of the nearby buildings were empty and the streets had been deserted enough that they'd maybe escaped notice from the closest neighbors, but he didn't want to push his luck by going back to the club. Not in THIS state.

"Right, right. Safehouse Delta?"

"On it. See you there."

Rolling the rifle in the tarp, she paused to gather up what looked like a squat can by the corner of the roof, and hopped down to the alley below. Grim followed, flying at about twenty feet up, getting away from the club.

It had been such a good day, too. Now this. He'd get to the safehouse, and he'd take a few minutes to rest and let the vitals heal back, and then he'd start making some calls.

There were times he regretted leaving the Protectorate. Times he hated himself for turning his back on heroics, on helping people, on making the world a better place.

But times like this? When bloody vengeance was on the menu, and SOMEBODY was going to have a REALLY, REALLY bad day for what they'd done?

Times like this, he didn't regret switching sides one single bit. The chance of satisfaction made everything all better.

There was going to be a reckoning, and the Graveyard Gang was going to bring down a freight train of pain on mister smartass sniper and whoever else got in the way...


	7. Omens and Portents

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon her property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**Omens and Portents**

1320, 05/22/2012

Outside of the Mayaway Comanche Reservation, South of Sancti

Joseph Littlehorn was sitting on his porch when the police car pulled up. He'd been having a nap in the shade, occasionally waking to watch the tumbleweeds go by. Maureen was knocking about in the building behind him, back in the single-room corrugated-metal shack that had once been a quonset hut, left behind by the army back in the 40s. Maureen was probably fixing dinner by now, probably corn tamales. He could live with corn tamales. They didn't disturb his ulcer much, as food went.

Police, now... Police tended to disturb his ulcer a bit more. He watched the two officers exit the car, head up the driveway towards the canvas awning he'd set his chair under. He squinted as they got closer... Ah. Menendez and Hartman. Well, this wouldn't be any trouble.

Under the blanket on his lap, his fingers stopped reaching for the Colt 1911. Instead, he dug around, pulled out a hip flask, and took a swallow. Maureen would kill him if she knew it was whiskey in the flask, but that was all right.

And as the officers drew near, the light of the sun changed. Their steps slowed, and their bodies glowed with inner light, their outlines wavering. He cocked an eye at the flask, but it too, was rippling. A face formed in the tarnished metal of the flask... He knew this face well. It was the watcher, with a face that was all eyes and ears, and no mouth.

Well. They were going to tell him something important, and he had best listen.

Important things usually took a while. He got to his feet as the world returned to its regular speed, and the colors turned back to normal. The face was gone, and he carefully stoppered the flask, and put it on the railing. He threw one corner of the blanket over his shoulder to hold it steady.

Menendez waved as they got to the mailbox.

"Hey, Little Joe."

"Rick, Michael." he said in his dry, soft voice. "Come in. The woman's about got dinner ready." He had no clue whether or not that was so, but at least they'd be out of the sun for the talk.

They glanced at each other, and followed Joe in.

Inside, the hut was fairly spartan. A few blankets hung here and there, separating the inner space into compartments. A chipped and weathered table sat in the center, with mismatched folding chairs around it. Clothes hang drying from a line in the back, a fan next to them going full blast to spread the humidity a bit through the dry air. An old clock radio with flipping plastic tiles instead of a digital readout proclaimed it to be a bit past one. In one corner a dusty air conditioning window unit chugged away, its dripping engine no match for the hot desert around it.

Maureen pushed open a curtain, revealing a small kitchen space with a squat iron stove which had probably been there since the hut was built. A savory odor wafted out, and Joe enjoyed it. It even beat out the stench of the cigarette dangling from one corner of Maureen's mouth. She frowned, and turned back to the stove, setting out another pan as she went. The clanking and fussing was exaggerated, her way of criticizing Joe for not warning her of company coming. Joe sighed to himself. Damned woman was impossible to live with on a good day. Now she'd be insufferable until he made it up to her.

He caught a lot of flack from the tribal idiots for shacking with a white woman. Considering the situation, it bothered him not at all. Heh. If only they knew...

He gestured at the table, and the three of them found seats around it. Joe smiled as best he could, leaned on his elbows, folded his hands together.

"To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

The two cops glanced at each other. It was Menendez who finally spoke up, of course. He'd been here many times before, knew how this worked.

"It's the Devil Dog thing."

Joe remembered the watcher, and kept his mouth shut.

"The PRT thinks he might be doing something in Texas, so we've been ordered to check out a buncha old, empty places. Look for places he mighta stashed weapons."

Well. This could be awkward.

"Ell-tee had a list of sites. We volunteered to go check out Lakeshore."

Lakeshore was just north of here. Back in the sixties, the Army Engineering Corps had a notion to dam off the nearby Yoke river, create a reservoir, and start reclaiming the desert. They'd made a big fuss about it, and a few investors had started buying up what would be lakeside property once it was done, and putting up buildings that would one day be a resort town. But the plans had fallen through, and all that ever came of it were a half-finished hotel out in the middle of nowhere, and a couple of construction trailers.

Joe had found Lakeshore very useful. And he wanted it to continue to be so for the near future.

"Thing is, uh... Well, we figured we'd get your okay for that. Sir."

Joe smiled.

He reached into the blanket, and Hartman tensed. Tch, idiot. He'd only been privy to this arrangement for a few months, but Menendez was supposed to be keeping him leashed. Joe truly hoped that was so. He'd hate to bury another body out back.

Joe's hand emerged with a roll of bills, and Menendez smiled, reaching out a hand. Joe didn't hand it over.

Menendez blinked. "Sir?"

"No need to check out Lakeshore. Nothing up there but coyotes and scorpions," Joe lied. They knew he lied, but it didn't matter. "But I wouldn't want your boss to think you'd shirked. Stay here and have dinner with us, and go tell him it was empty when you get back. And here... A gift for you, for showing respect to your elders, and listening to their advice."

He counted out five hundred for each of them, and they took it with relief in their eyes.

Joe kept smiling. From across the way, Maureen brought the plate of tamales out, along with three bottles of beer. Joe sat and drank, as the cops told him about their briefing that morning. About this Devil Dog, and the fight in Nacogdoches. Then the convenience store by Abilene.

They didn't talk about much else, and he was annoyed a bit that the watcher had felt it necessary to point him to this conversation. Still, you don't go against the visions, he'd learned that a long time ago. Fuckers got MEAN when you ignored them.

Finally, an hour or so later, they left. He carried his plate into the kitchen, started rinsing it off. Maureen crossed her arms, glared at him. Joe said nothing.

"Don't do the inscrutable thing, you jackass. Doesn't work on me."

Joe smiled. "Just putting my thoughts in order."

"We got lucky that Menendez could volunteer on this one. If they'd sent someone who wasn't on our bribe list-"

"Then the others would see them coming on the road, and hunker down like they're supposed to. We've run enough drills, they should know how to get below and get rid of the evidence."

"You KNOW it isn't foolproof..." He let her grumble. Finally she stopped, and he asked "What do you know about Devil Dog?"

"Not much. Saw him on the news a few times. The cops probably told you more'n I could. Why?"

"Signs are pointing toward him being important."

Her demeanor changed instantly. "You... Had a vision?" Her eyes were eager, her posture leaning in, greedy. Joe sighed to himself. "No. My fucking subconscious, which was fucking enabled by my power to give vague fucking hints of future events did its usual vague fucking Hey, this might be useful to you hint."

She spread her arms. "You had a vision! Finally! We can get OUT of this dump! I'll start packing!"

He closed his eyes, counted to ten. She was already rummaging around in the back. Dammit, she was going to wear her costume. He rolled his eyes. The others already KNEW what she looked like, and they were just going up the road- Hell with it. Damned if he'd let her upstage him.

Joe went for his costume, too.

Fifteen minutes later, the white pickup truck crawled up the drive to Lakeshore. Through his mask, Joe peered up at the abandoned crane, saw a flash of light from the top of the arm. Good, the lookout was there and signalling. Three flashes, followed by two, hard as hell to see unless you were looking for them. Three then two was friendlies coming in. Just three alone would have been "evacuate, lockdown." Two and two would have been "Ready for a fight."

The pickup truck stopped in front of the old hotel, which raised exposed girders to the sky like the ribcage of some dead animal grown to enormous size. The upper floors were a wreck, open to the elements and creatures of the desert. But the lower floor was mostly intact, and the fallout shelter hidden beneath made a perfect lair.

Joe stepped out of the truck, adjusting his body armor as he went. The olive-green flak jacket blended in with the dyed and armored leather pants, which creaked as he walked. At his belt a steel hatchet, and on his back an assault rifle. His face was masked... Wood on the outside, it had layers of metal and ceramic composite, with a leather liner, miniature rebreather, coolant system, and nightvision lenses that could be toggled on and off. It resembled a fearsome kachina mask, square eyes and round mouth, painted white and red and yellow and fringed with coyote fur. In appearance, a crude tribal conceit. In actuality, heavily-armored and technologically sophisticated. He liked it when people judged by appearances. Joe worked best when he was underestimated.

From the other door, Maureen hopped down. Clad in tight-fitting buckskins with an armor-weave serape over her torso and arms, her mask was almost featureless. A plain, white mask with a feminine bent to it, that somehow depicted a weeping woman.

The man who stepped out of the hotel to meet them wore no mask. He had no secret identity to hide, was a wee bit too distinctive to bother. He was eight feet tall if he was an inch, with no neck to speak of, and muscles so exaggerated that they looked like someone had implanted rocks beneath his skin. His face was broad and flattened, as if it had been rammed repeatedly into a wall in an effort to crack his skull.

Actually, that had happened before, several times. But his face was pretty much the same before that had happened.

He was dressed simply in brown spandex, with buffalo-fur fringes. He'd tried other materials, but they just couldn't handle his abilities. He was stuck wearing a jumpsuit.

The man grinned. "Chief. Little Cloud." Maureen shifted. She hated that name.

"Bison." Joe nodded back. He'd never liked "Chief". Too simple. It was a title he hadn't earned, either. Technically with his power he was closer to a shaman anyway, but no other parahuman in the current group had much in the way of leadership skills. At all.

Besides, Joe had discovered that the older he got, the more he preferred giving orders to taking them. It meant people listened to him when he had something to say. "Bison, call the others together for a meeting."

Bison grinned wider, showing flat, bad teeth. "We finally done training? We got a mission?"

"I think we do," said Chief, walking into the lair. "I think it's time for the Serpent Lodge to take a hand in matters once more..."


	8. Rest and Recovery

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon her property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**Rest and Recovery**

_1850, 05/22/2012 PRT Headquarters, Downtown Sancti_

Maria woke to the sound of machines humming away nearby. She glanced over, around. She was on a plain cot, and white curtains walled her off to either side. Soft lights shown down, and a cluster of machines on a rolling stand was pushed next to her bedside. One of them was an IV, that was busy dripping red fluid through a tube, into her arm.

Her leg throbbed with a dull, insistent pain. She lifted the sheet to examine it, found herself in a paper hospital gown underneath. The wound she'd recieved earlier had been bandaged. She wiggled her toes, sighed when they moved in response. So far so good.

Then she remembered how little her insurance covered, and her heart fell. No. No, not so good. She'd have to take on more debt to pay for this hospital visit. Could she walk? Maybe she wouldn't have to stay overnight.

"Ah good, you're up." A female voice, with a clipped accent and an authoritarian note to it. Maria blinked. A shadow moved across one cloth curtain, and Maria sat up. Her head swam, and she took a second to squeeze her eyes shut and balance herself. Still light-headed...

The curtain slid aside, revealing a woman wearing a full-faced white mask, with a red cross dividing it into four equal quarters. There were no eye slits, or holes for a mouth or nose. Blonde hair spilled loosely out of the back of the mask, and the unknown woman was wearing a simple white hospital smock, a white jacket and slacks, and elbow-length blue surgical gloves. Oddly enough, the gloves seemed to have a few too many fingers, and the arms bent in ways that suggested a third joint between elbow and wrist.

"How are you feeling?"

Maria blinked. "I'm... Fine, I guess. Is Brad all right? Officer Kent, I mean?"

The mask tilted. "He's recovering from a skin graft right now. The... FASCINATING coccoon was quite firmly attached to his arm. It took some dedicated extraction."

Maria stared at the woman for a long minute. "This isn't Cornelo Medical Center, is it?"

A dry chuckle from behind the mask. "No. You're in the PRT headquarters, my dear. Allow me to introduce myself... I am the Good Doctor."

Maria shook hands with her, trying to ignore the extra fingers. "I see." A weight left her heart. The PRT had stupidly good funding, she might get out of here without medical bills.

"My powers lend themself to more of a support capability. My personality lends itself more to research, rather than public appearance. As such, I am an often overlooked member of the Sancti Protectorate, which is just how I prefer it."

Maria was curious. She'd never heard of any cape called the Good Doctor before. "What are your powers? I mean, no offense, I, just... Well..."

The woman rested a hand on her shoulder, shone a light in her eyes as she replied. "Ah. Well. Simply put, my specialty is nerves. I can rebuild them, enhance them, disrupt them in some cases. I'm the best brain surgeon on the continent, WITH a full medical degree and plenty of experience in the field, I might add. If necessary, I COULD perform a full brain transplant, and so long as tissue rejection was dealt with, success would be guaranteed."

She hesitated. "All theoretical, mind you." She finished with the light, had Maria run through a few exercises with hand-eye coordination, and nodded. "Simple blood loss and stress. You're about recovered, though I should prefer you stay overnight, if possible."

Maria bit her lip. "I'm grateful, but the bills-"

The Doctor waved a hand. "Nonsense. On the house. The least we can do for you, after you found Scorpus Christi for us. AND brought in that DELIGHTFUL specimen that we peeled off your partner's arm."

Maria sighed in relief. "So you DID get her. Good."

"Yes. Once she was down, the containment van we had standing by was able to move in safely. A few passes with containment foam, and she was secured and in transit well before she could waken. But I'm starting to digress, here, and I have other business to tend to. Are you up for visitors? Marshal would like to debrief you and your partner."

"Oh! Well... Yes. Yes, I suppose. Though I should really check in with the precinct-"

"Already taken care of. The Director called them up personally. Commended you and officer Kent, for duty above and beyond the usual."

Maria held her tongue. She STILL had the suspicion that the Director had arranged to use the SPD for bait. The fact that it had worked didn't excuse the fact that she and Brad had to do hospital time as a result.

She felt tired, but pushed it away. Marshal and his team had probably saved her. She wasn't sure she could have taken out Scorpus before she'd passed out from blood loss. The least she could do was talk with him. "Yes. In that case yes, I can see him."

The Good Doctor nodded, and glided back the way she'd come. After a minute, Maria heard spurs clinking as boots moved across the floor, and the curtain was pulled aside again.

He'd taken his hat off, but the rest of his costume remained. She noticed that up close, he had deep lines in his face, a bit of a sunburn, and a bald spot forming on the top of his head. Odd, that. Made him seem a little more human. He coughed, cleared his throat, and offered her a pink envelope.

She blinked, took it, and opened it. Inside was a Hallmark card, a simple, stupid little Hallmark card that said "Get well soon," with signatures all along the inside. At some point in the last few hours he'd stopped, taken a few minutes, and picked up a damn Hallmark card and gotten his whole team to sign it. The gesture that cheesy little bit of paperstock represented damn near made her eyes fill with tears.

"I... Thank you..." She managed, and offered him a hand. He shook, beaming underneath his mustaches, and pulled up a chair, before easing himself down.

"No. Thank YOU, Officer Navarrez. You and your partner and th' rest o' yer team go an risk yer necks every day out there. Y'all deal with stuff that we can't get to, help people we never meet, and keep this city together even when times are the darkest. It is an honor to meet you, and thank YOU. And right now, if you could look me in the eye, smile, an' tell me yer welcome, then I'd be tickled pink to hear it."

She blinked until the tears were out, gave him the sunniest smile she could muster, and said "You're welcome."

He nodded, and his weathered face creased in a smile of its own. A lot of those lines were laughter lines, she saw. It reminded her of her father, her poor father back before the accident... She pushed that aside.

He waited while she gathered her thoughts, pulling out a pistol with long ease, followed by a small ramrod and cloth. While she watched, he broke the gun into pieces and cleaned it... A solemn ritual, and one he'd obviously had long patience with.

It occured to her out of nowhere that she could probably ebay that card, that SIGNED card for a good chunk of change, and she snorted with entirely inappropriate laughter. He quirked an eye at her, but didn't interrupt, just kept cleaning the revolver.

"Sorry."

"No, no, it's fine. Ain't done nothin' to apologize fer."

After a minute, she gathered herself again, lay back in the cot and looked up at him. "You, the Doctor said you wanted to debrief me?"

Marshal's smile lessened just a bit. She wouldn't have noticed it if he weren't sitting as close as he was. "Yep. Just a few answers, if you feel up to it."

"Okay."

"Accordin' to yer chief, you were checkin' out a rock quarry? Doin' a routine sweep of some sort?"

Maria frowned. "No. It wasn't routine at all. We were looking for Devil Dog's weapons caches. This was a special thing."

Marshal frowned. "What? Why were y'all doing a thing like that? Devil Dog's a parahuman. That's more our line of trouble..."

She said nothing, looked away. Marshal read the answer in her body language. "Aw hell. Yer out there gettin' banged up on our behalf? I reckon I ought to pay the director a visit-"

"No!" Maria said, shaking her head. Then as things spun she winced, and repeated herself a bit more quietly. "No. It's okay. It's our city too, you know? If it means we flush them out and you take them in, that's fine."

Marshal scowled. "Still ain't right. That oughta be a volunteer task at most. I'm reckoning y'all didn't get no choice in the matter."

"Well, no. But we can do it. We did it. And you grabbed her, and she's in prison now, right?"

"Close enough. She's in the sturdiest cell we got, that's wired up with some of the Good Doctor's nerve disruptor mesh. Once the eggheads study her a bit, maybe see if she'll communicate more'n she has in the past, they'll figure out what t' do with her. If I get any say in it, she'll get the birdcage. She's killed, terrorized, and caused plenty enough havoc for my blood."

He snorted, looked off at something in the distance. "Still feels strange sayin' "SHE" about that poor critter. But I guess between them eggs and the doctor's examination, that's how it is. Not that it makes a difference, I reckon."

"Hey. About those eggs..." Maria told him about the quarry, the abandoned tunnel and the generator hooked up to the heat lamps. He listened, his eyebrows moving up on his forehead as she spoke.

"Well now. This is... Hm. Either she's smarter n' better with tools then we thought, or she's got friends. And since we didn't find nothin' like that by the time we scrambled a squad out that way, I think I know which it is. You helped me out here Miss Navarrez, and I thank you kindly for it."

She gave him a genuine smile. "Thank you."

"Ah ah ah. Remember, it's You're WELCOME. C'mon, ain't too hard to say."

She chuckled. "You're welcome."

He nodded, and got up to leave, replacing the now-cleaned revolver in its holster. "Oh. One more thing... That lightnin' feller."

She forced her face to be still. God, it was so hard to stay deadpan. She'd had practice, though. She'd known from day one that sooner or later she'd have to talk about her other form and lie the best she'd ever lied.

"Yes... I think I saw him. I was a little out of it by then."

Marshal straightened his duster, fiddled with his star. "That's the fifth time in the last few years that feller's shown up outta the blue, and either helped out when we needed it, or saved our bacon. Did you see him show up? Anythin' out of the ordinary?"

She shook her head, looked past his face. "No. Like I said, I was a little out of it."

"Well if'n you see him afore I do, tell him I owe him one. And that my offer stands whenever he feels like formally joinin' the side of the angels.

She nodded, and he shook her hand one last time, before leaving.

She spent the rest of her conscious time staring at that silly little Hallmark Card, reading the signatures one by one.

And finally, she fell back into an exhausted sleep.


	9. Blessed be the Peacemakers

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon his property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**Blessed be the Peacemakers**

_0930, 05/23/2012 Church of the Blessed Angels, Northeast of Sancti_

Fire roared to life outside, as the stained glass windows of the church shattered. The congregation screamed, and fought to pull inward, toward the altar.

This, thought Father Figure, was intolerable.

And he used the word.

"Everyone." Though it had been but a single word against the screams, every head in the room snapped toward him. Father Figure's power was simple... He could control the attention of anyone he could see, or anyone who could hear his voice.

As many local heroes had found, it was much, much more useful in a fight than one might think. Or a crisis, like this.

"I ask you to part, and exit through the rectory. I'll see about this."

They weren't under any compulsion to follow his words, but all of them were long-time followers and supporters. They'd listened to him long enough that they even formed orderly lines, as they filed past the altar and started to exit.

CRACK!

Father raised an eyebrow.

CRACK! CRACK! Bullets? Not good. Not aimed at HIM, at least. Not at the minute, anyway...

He steeled himself and pretended to ignore the shots until the last of his flock was out the door. Immediately after the last was through, he dropped his fake bravado and dove for cover under a pew. He pulled out a cell phone, called the first number. No connection.

His face twisted with rage. There was only one reason for that.

The door slammed, and a pair of massive feet wearing custom-made black shoes pounded down the aisle. Father rose, his face still stern. Angry. "Samson."

Samson was one of his most wayward followers. The bulky man with the unbound, waist-length brown hair was a simple sort. He liked his food, his women, and his other little luxuries. Father Figure and the rest of the Faithful kept him supplied with all those things, and in return his strength and toughness were a boon to the cause. Initially an unbeliever, over the years Father and the rest had worn a rough faith into him.

Samson was weeping now, his great shoulders heaving. Small, round pock-marks in the skin of one cheek were barely oozing blood. Aside from those minor wounds, he was uninjured. Yet the big man sank into a pew like he'd been mortally wounded. And Father knew why.

"It was a bomb, yes?"

"A car b-bomb. I think." Samson snuffled. "Stigmata was..."

Father turned, walked back to the altar, leaned against it. "I shouldn't have sent her to bring the car around. GOD!"

He beat his fists upon the altar. "Why do you test us so!"

Samson snuffled, and Father teased out enough of his power to ensure a slow, rising attention to himself. Simple manipulation, something he'd done many times before with the oaf.

"Why? Why... It's not fair. It's not fair-" Father whipped his head around, fixed Samson with a gaze. "-said Job, back in them ancient times. It's not fair... But never once did Job curse god. And I shall not either. For God is not to blame here."

He stalked down the aisle, stabbed a finger at Samson and held him rapt. "MAN IS TO BLAME!" He roared. Samson nodded, his tears still rolling, but his face setting with an ugly grimace. "And for that, he shall pay sevenfold. Now cover me to the window, my son, for I need to see who the hell's shot at you."

Samson got up, and Father Figure crouched lower behind him, following him to the front.

The broken window frames revealed the still-burning limousine, and he felt a flash of regret and anger anew. Just like that, Stigmata had been taken from them. Poor, innocent stigmata. He'd spent years breaking her in, both as their team healer, and as a personal bedwarmer. Granted, she wasn't the BEST lay around, but there were times when innocence just scratched that itch like nothing else could. Ah well.

He pulled his head back behind Samson. As he did so, there was another CRACK! and a bullet whistled past his head. Inches. Mere inches.

Where?

He dropped and rolled... CRACK! CRACK! Two more rounds! Samson was up in the window, yelling an incoherent challenge. Father found himself untouched, and looked... Holes in the wall to the LEFT of the window. Someone was firing heavy calibre rounds through the church at an angle. Still, the fact that he hadn't been hit meant they were most likely firing blind.

Well. He had a solution to this.

"ALL MY FOES! LOOK TO THE SKIES! Samson, he's to the right, GO!"

The bullets ceased, and the big man dove through the window. Father Figure crawled towards the door, under the path of the previous bullets.

CRACK!

"ALL MY FOES! LOOK TO THE SKIES!"

Another pause. Samson bellowed, and Father heard a crunch of metal impacting something solid at high speeds.

He also heard sirens in the distance. He frowned. THe Faithful knew better than to call 911. But, then, carbombs tended to be noisy, and there were neighbors around.

Something tickled at the back of his mind... Hadn't there been a car bomb in the city, yesterday? He'd barely paid attention to it when it came up on the news.

Two more CRACKs, each one a little more distant. Father Figure crawled into the vestibule, found a long coat that one of his elderly flock had left behind, and draped it over his suit, disguising his clothes against the shooter. He moved outside, looking around...

And he froze. There was a tornado in the distance, making its way through the little cluster of suburban houses, following the road. It was even giving way to oncoming traffic, and turning corners without collateral damage.

Great. Dust Devil and probably more of the Protectorate. Could his day get ANY better?

He retreated into the vestibule, found a wide-brimmed hat, and put it on. He made it outside, just as the funnel cloud touched down, and coalesced into the swirling, djinn-like form of Dust Devil. Wiretap tucked her rebreather onto her belt and straightened up... And before they could take a good look at him, he directed their attention to the flaming car.

"Well, hell. There's another one. You see what happened, sir?" He shook his head, concealed his face under the guise of rubbing his brow, and kept their attention to him at a minimum. Sure enough, thanks to his power, he was too unobtrusive to be worthy of more than mild curiousity.

"Alright Dusty, put her out and let's see what we've got..."

He focused their full attention on the task at hand, and jogged around the building. With two heroes here, he doubted the shooter would continue his assault.

He passed the last remnants of the congregation, who had retreated to the small park across the way. He passed crumpled remnants of metal and trash, and a bent stop sign that looked equally abused. And finally he caught up to the big man three blocks down, glaring down the busy street as if it had personally offended him.

Hell, maybe it had. Samson wasn't that bright to begin with.

Father Figure shucked the coat and hat as he went. "What happened?"

"One guy. All in black, body armor. Quick fucker-"

"Language."

"Sorry, Father. He dropped the rifle when I threw the dumpster at him. Then he ran. He was four blocks ahead, when an SUV pulled up and next thing I know, he's jumped by guys in camo. They drag him in, and they're off before I can do nothing." He glared at the street. "Too much traffic here. Couldn't even throw nothin' without being seen."

Father clapped him on the back. "You did well. There's two of the Protectorate back at the church. As it is, we'd best be off..."

As they went, he pulled out his cell-phone again, texted a message requesting pick-up. While the phone sent it through, he glanced over to Samson again.

"Men in camo, you say?"

"Yeah. Hey... You thinkin'..."

"Maybe. Why would the AMM break the truce NOW, of all times? What would it gain them?"

Samson shrugged his massive shoulders. "Dunno."

Father nodded. "Rhetorical question. And one better asked when the rest of the apostles are assembled."

A few minutes later, the ride arrived. And as the white cadillac pulled up, Father took one second to look back at the fading plume of smoke over by the church. "Someone's declared war on us, my son. More fool they, for the Lord of Hosts is with us. They have sown the wind, and now they shall reap the whirlwind..."


	10. The Devil You Don't Know

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon his property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**The Devil You Don't Know**

_1148, 05/23/2012 AMM Compound, West of Sancti_

After what seemed like most of an eternity, Callahan's eyes cracked open. He blinked away the blurriness, and waited for them to clear.

His side throbbed, and he moved a hand to it... Rather, he tried. His arm jerked against wire. He tried his other hand, found a similar effect.

Ah.

He turned his neck... That still worked. Dim room, light filtering in through closed blinds. Dark enough, but he could almost see. What he couldn't see, a few test motions confirmed. He was seated on a wooden, high-backed chair. Bound to it with wires, at the ankles and wrists. Knees and elbows bound as well. Someone was taking him seriously, and he had a notion who was to blame.

He found that moving one hand also moved the other. An eyebrow rose. Seriously? They'd bound his hands with a connecting tether, a connecting WIRE tether? Morons. He set his hands to working, sawing the wire against the wood, back and forth, rasping.

His side throbbed again. That was where the taser had struck, he remembered. Hadn't helped that he had been going without body armor for this one. Needed speed to get the pursuit into the killbox. But he'd never reached the killbox.

Camoflaged men had ambushed him on the way there. He'd seen them coming, could have turned, but didn't. Could have killed his way out of the ambush, hadn't. Could have dodged the pointman with the taser, but restrained himself.

All it had cost him was pain and a bit of replaceable equipment, and so far, the plan was inside acceptable parameters.

And his freedom to move, of course, for the time being... But that was fine. He'd stirred the pot, and was in one of the places he'd hoped to get to. Unless they up and shot him, he could probably keep the original plan. And hell, if there was a single big benefit to being Devil Dog, it was that people KNEW that shooting wouldn't stop you.

So long as they kept thinking that, things would probably work out...

After perhaps ten minutes, there were approaching footsteps. A muffled challenge from outside the door. Camera? Ah, there it was, up in the corner. Probably infrared, since the light in here was so poor. He could work with that.

The door opened, revealing a brightly-lit hallway. Three silhouettes looking in. Callahan closed one eye, squinted at them with the other. All male, all dressed similarly. Two were pointing longarms at him. The third walked into the room, moved out of the firing lane from the doorway, and lit a cigar. Light flared, revealing aviator sunglasses, and a green beret atop a broad face that had nary a laugh line on it. The man shook out the match, and puffed, taking a moment to consider Callahan.

"As you were, soldier."

Callahan looked down at his bound form, looked back up again. He kept his mouth shut.

"Devil Dog or Callahan?" Asked the cigar smoker. Callahan didn't answer.

One of the gunmen walked over, casually slammed the butt of his longarm into Callahan's face. He fell backward in the chair, cracking his head against the tiled floor as he went. Pain flared and things went sparky for a few moments... By the time he recovered, both the gunmen were in there, hauling the chair upright again. Callahan grimaced to himself. Sloppy. They'd let the rifles swing back on their slings. There was no one covering him at the minute.

He felt around his teeth with a tongue. All still there. Be one hell of a bruised cheekbone, though.

Amateurs who didn't know enough to keep guns on a dangerous prisoner, but sure as hell knew how to hit one without doing serious damage. Yep, these jackasses were everything he'd expected and less.

"Boys... No need to be so rough. He ain't going nowhere." The cigar smoker exhaled a cloud, and grinned. "Besides, I reckon he'll talk. I ain't one of his targets, after all. I'm Crockett. GENERAL Crockett, to you. I reckon that's got rank on you son, so you tell me how you want me to call you, and answer my questions, and I reckon we'll get on fine."

Callahan considered him for a moment, then flicked his eyes down to the glowing point of the cigar. "Callahan's fine." He shut an eye again. Under the chair, he resumed sawing the wire between his wrists, deeper into the wood.

With his open one, he could make out one of the thugs sneering. Good. Attitudes like that were to be encouraged for now. It'd make things easier later.

The grin again. Crockett motioned with the cigar hand, and the first thug grabbed his chair and backhanded him. He rolled with it, made a show of jerking his head to make it look worse than it was, coughed a bit for effect, and took his time straightening his gaze back to his interrogator. "You answer me with a SIR, understand. You do remember yer trainin', right son?"

"Yes sir."

Another puff of smoke. The grin disappeared. "I must admit to bein' a bit disappointed, sergeant Callahan. I mean, when I heard of you a few years back, I thought now THERE'S a soldier we could use. But seein' how easy my boys took you in, seein' you in this here chair... Well, you're human, just like the rest. Pissed yerself when the taser hit, and out like a light with just a quick injection. Guess your power's made ya sloppy, son. And that's why folks like me are always gonna win over folks like you. There's lots of us, and not so many of y'all, and we KNOW just how mortal we are. We never forget it."

He stood and paced. Callahan turned his head to watch him. Not much to look at, now that his eyes were adjusting. An average-sized man, maybe a little short, with the start of a pot-belly and greying hair. He looked like a store clerk, save for the glasses and the khaki fatigues, and the sidearm holstered at his hip.

"Can't forget it. Country's goin' to hell, after all. It was ruined by them liberal assholes for decades, and a government that's forgotten how to make the hard choices. Capes have risen up to be little gods over men, and the average person is in CONSTANT danger from the whims of folks who the system was never meant to handle."

Crockett faced him, removed the glasses. Dark eyes underneath, Callahan couldn't tell the color in the dim light.

"But you, I don't have to give you the speech. I know what happened to yer family, son. That weren't right."

Callahan closed his eyes, let his head hang.

"And you went for them that did it, and kept on going. Hell, I ought to shake yer hand. Maybe I will, once we're done here, if you come around to my way of thinkin'."

He looked at Crockett again.

Crockett grinned a wry grin. "Don't get me wrong. You got no place in the future of Texas, once we restore the Republic and fly the flag again. Once we kick the fallen mockery of US government to the curb, and run the beaners back over the fences, it'll be native Texans allowed only, and you ain't one. But in the meantime, you COULD be useful ta me."

Crockett moved over to him, squatted down, hands on his knees so he was looking Callahan even in the eye. Callahan fought hard to keep his face impassive. Amateurs, nothing but amateurs. Still, dangerous amateurs right now.

"Yer here huntin' Capes, and we got no shortage of those," said Crockett. "Got a few of those in our army, and they're off limits. But I got a friend tells me you ain't after OURS, anyway."

He didn't mention Occam, but his eyes were studying Callahan closely. He was waiting for a reaction, so Callahan formed his face into the appearance of hurt. Amateurs get more complacent when they see what they expect to see...

Sure enough, "General" Crockett grinned. "Yep. He came to me, told me you asked about all the local capes. But you weren't interested much in our boys. You didn't say that, but your questions spoke volumes, and my GOOD friend the razor is good at paring away falsehoods until the truth remains. He knows you ain't after US. And so, we can maybe come to a deal, here."

"I'm listening. Sir."

Crockett nodded, pulled out a second cigar, offered it to him. Callahan shook his head, ignored the pain. The secondhand smoke he was getting from this talk would be enough of a taint, he'd have to detox later. No sense in adding more to it. The general continued.

"Carbombs and sniping. You hit the Faithful... The Graveyard Gang too, if I'm reading between the lines properly. Nothing came of the one yesterday, but today you took out Stigmata, by the looks of it. She was a healer, a strong one. Also had this trick where she could make your blood run out your body just by lookin' at ya. Powerful. Potent. Now gone, and the Faithful are weakened. Vulnerable."

The General straightened up. "We're too well-known. Everyone knows our headquarters. Everyone knows our methods. Everyone knows who my boys are... Well, except Everyman, most of the time. But he's harder to deploy then you'd think, for reasons I ain't going into. You know how it is. And everyone is our enemy... No friends, not here. Three big gangs full of ruthless criminals, god-damned Marshall's boys in the Protectorate, and the hatred of plenty of ordinary folks who SHOULD BE ON OUR DAMN SIDE!" Spittle flew from Crockett's mouth, as he stubbed his cigar out on one leather-gloved hand.

"Too well known. But that's where YOU come in, son." The general's grin was back.

"Yer DEVIL DOG. Everyone KNOWS you kill capes. And yer methods are similar enough to our own, we can back you up on the hush. Instead a' pulling it alone, we coordinate our teams with you, provide you resources, backup, and everything you need to kill your way across the local scene. Hell, we fake a few deaths on our side, just to muddy the waters a bit, until we've got enough of an advantage that it doesn't matter anyways. We keep doing this, get the other folks chasing you so hard that they ain't lookin' at us, and ensure that EVERY DAMN ONE of those bastards who DESERVES to eat a bullet, gets one."

"And at the end of this, the town'll be cleaned up. It'll be OUR town again, like it was 'fore the oil money drew the vultures in. Damned carpetbaggers... And since Occam confirms my boys aren't targets, well, then we'll part no hard feelin's after it's done."

The general was lying, of course. But that was to be expected. Still, this was better than Callahan had hoped. It would mean working with these racist assholes for a while, or at least pretending to. But he'd done worse, many times over. Many lives ago, and many lives to come.

He felt the gentle sawing of the wire go slack, and the wooden chair sag a bit. Finally, he'd cut through something important... He braced his legs, and tested his balance. Good. This was workable. Time for a demonstration.

He looked at Crockett, smiled a smile that was all teeth and no emotion.

"Here's the deal. I call the shots. You disclose full intel on our targets, INCLUDING the stuff that Occam withheld from me. You give me all the support I request, and when I tell you to stay out of my way, you stay the hell out of my way. And if some of your play soldiers get killed, that's collateral. Do you understand?"

Crockett's eyes popped fully open, angry. It had been a long, long time since ANYONE had spoken to him like this. "I told you! You call me SIR, boy!" He gestured at the first gunman, who stepped forward and tried to slam the rifle butt into Callahan's cheek again!

"Tried to" were the operative words, here. As the gunstock came around, time slowed and Callhan threw himself in the opposite direction, twisting himself to bring the chair around, and slamming it into the wall! Sure enough, the wire-cut supports gave and the chair broke! Wood jabbed him painfully in the back, but he ignored it as he stretched his arms, causing his side to shriek in pain. He jammed his feet behind him into the wire-wrapped arch of his arms, pulling them in, then under, until his arms were in front of him again.

Thug number two shouted in alarm and levelled his rifle as the first man recovered from his missed swing and started after him, but Callahan was already bounding on his knees and hands, loping like a dog, to crash into General Crockett! He bowled the man over, grabbed the collar of the pudgy man's BDUs with his right hand, and raised both himself and the General to a standing position, ignoring the screaming pain in his legs as blood flowed into them again.

As the general fumbled for his sidearm, Callahan let him go. He aimed the general's own pistol at him with his left hand. Somewhere between the initial collision and jerking them both upright, he'd managed to grab it right out of the holster.

General Crockett stared down in amazement at his empty holster.

The whole scene, from the moment the thug had started his swing, to now, couldn't have taken more than three seconds.

The thugs froze.

The General blinked.

Callahan smiled again, and said. "Sir." He flipped the pistol around so that the butt was in the air, and offered it back to General Crockett.

Crockett blinked a few times, pulled out a second cigar, and lit it. The dim light concealed his shaking hands from the thugs, but not from Callahan. He chuckled, and took it back. "Well. That was smooth. Dave, go get some cutters, let's get our guest unbound. Son, looks like you ARE as good as we heard."

He took the pistol back, offered a handshake.

Callahan shook, and the bargain was sealed.

Poor bastards, he thought. Oh, these poor bastards...


	11. Heart to Heart

This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".

Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon her property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.

Heart to Heart

0918, 05/23/2012 PRT Headquarters, Downtown Sancti

Maria was wakened by the sound of little voices.

"Mama! Mama!" She sat up in bed, winced...

This is not my bed, she realized.

She looked around, and memory returned. The hospital cot, in the PRT HQ... Right... It hadn't been a dream.

Her leg? Still bandaged. The IV was out of her arm though... And the little voices were there again, as the curtains rippled and Ellisa and Jenny pushed through them, and practically leaped onto her lap, squealing and hugging her.

Jenny was the older, at six years. Tall and long-haired, with her bangs held off her face by a pink hairband. Ellisa was four and shy with frizzy hair, and green eyes that squinted behind glasses. Maybe one day she'd be tall, but for now she took after her mom's shortness.

Maria felt tears on her cheeks, and a flush of guilt. She'd been so out of it the last time she was awake, she hadn't even thought of them... She hugged them to her, crying, and listening to their rambling stories of what they'd been doing and how long they'd waited for her to come home, and how Abuela had let them sleep over...

Eventually she blinked, and looked up to find Brad standing next to her, smiling. One arm was in a sort of layered plastic bag arrangement. "Hey. After you conked out last night I called your mother, told them where you were."

"Oh! Good. Good. Er... Mama wasn't too much trouble, I hope?" Abuela Navarrez was retired, brooked little nonsense, and had a hell of a temper with adults. Not so much children, which made her the perfect baby sitter, but anyone above twelve or so had to tread cautiously.

Brad grinned, ruefully. "She chewed me up one side and down the other for not taking care of you. But she cheered up some when I promised to run the kids over in the morning. So here we are."

"Don't we have shift?"

He snorted. "We're on medical leave for now. The Good Doctor says the healing goo in this cast will regrow the skin they had to take in a few days time, and you're on light duty until the blood you've lost gets mostly replaced. About a week to be safe, so take it easy until then."

She hugged her daughters to her again.

Through the curtain she saw a blue-jumpsuited figure walk into the room, followed by a fit and slim bald man wearing only sweat pants. Wiretap and Dust Devil... Wiretap had goggles on in place of her mask, and Dust Devil was harder to recognize in his more human form, but after seeing them up close and personally just yesterday, they were hard to mistake.

Brad smiled. "Hey. Hope you don't mind I brought in some special visitors!" He reached over and touseled Ellisa's head as the two girls fell silent, staring at the two heroes.

Wiretap looked nonplussed. She fiddled with something in her hands, cell-phone sized, and finally closed it, put it away. Dust Devil, on the other hand, grinned. He bent over and grinned, putting his head at eye level of the two. "Whoa! Hold up! We got some intruders here! They look like tough customers..."

Giggle, giggle, from the kids.

Dust Devil looked up at Wiretap. "Yep, we're doomed. Run for help! I'll distract them!"

He grabbed the curtain, twisted it into a sort of sack, and jumped into it, turning into a puff of whirling vapor as he went! The sack twisted around, propelling itself along the curtain rod, back and forth, two see-through hands holding the bottom almost shut... "Whoo!" His voice was distorted, different. "Ghost here! Run in fear! Big ghost! WHOOO!"

Jenny was shrieking with laughter. Ellisa, on the other hand, burst into a bout of shocked crying.

Wiretap palmed her face. "Al-uh, I mean, Dusty... Jesus, come on man..."

The sack stopped whipping around, and the vapor billowed out, coalescing into the bald man again. "Aw... Hey... I'm... Shit. Uh, you didn't hear that... Aw come on, stop crying... It was a joke..."

Ellisa was eventually coaxed down from her wailing with much hugging from Maria, and a promise of apology ice cream and a tour of "where the superheroes live!" from Dust Devil. Brad promised to go along to make sure no more ghosts were around. Though, from the glances Maria caught Brad sneaking at Dust Devil's bare chest, she rather thought he had ulterior motives. Well, that was fine.

And truth be told, she was a little tired anyway. Wiretap waved them off. "I'll catch up later. Want to check the machines, make sure her vitals are fine."

Maria leaned back in bed. At some point someone had delivered a tray of breakfast, so she investigated it while Wiretap checked the machines. Cold pancakes, some bacon, orange juice... The basics. It was good and it was filling, and she almost choked on it when Wiretap straightened up, looked her in the eye, and said "You did a good job of hiding it all these years."

Coughing, finally getting over the chunk of pancake she'd tried to inhale, Maria managed to keep composure. She couldn't stop the cold dread rising up from her stomach, though... "Um. Excuse me?"

"I think you know what I'm talking about. And relax, we've got some privacy here." Wiretap pulled out the cell phone, showed her a row of LED's along its case. "White noise generator. Right now none of the listening devices are hearing anything beyond murmured conversation about nothing in particular."

Maria slumped back in the bed, tried to keep a poker face. "You... Want to talk to me off the record? Okay..."

"After Jack Flash showed up to help with the hostage crisis in the Mission back last June, I added Emag scanners to my suit. Passive stuff. Wanted to get some readings from him, maybe track down where this mystery cape was coming from. How he was doing his thing."

She pulled over a chair and sat down. Maria blinked. "Jack... Flash?"

"It's what we call him, since he doesn't talk. You know, twelve foot two, lightning colored blue? Your imaginary friend. Or maybe your projection, I think. Something like that. But yeah, Jack Flash turned the Mission situation around. There would have been a lot of deaths if he hadn't shown up."

Maria remembered the Mission. The Faithful had taken hostages there. Father Figure had a list of demands, must of them unreasonable. Eve had literally coated each hostage in poisonous serpents, just waiting for the heroes to try something, before delivering venomous death to the innocents.

She'd been off duty at the time, but it was bad enough that her conscience had prodded her to help. She'd driven a few blocks away and used the energy of the underground lines below the Mission to deliver light shocks to all the hostages at once... Enough to drive the serpents away or stun them without harming the civilians. Marshall's team had used the opportunity to breach and keep the villains busy, but it had been too close... Maria had to call up her energy form to keep Eve from refocusing on the hostages. As it was, there had been a few bites but they got treatment in time. No deaths, barely.

Still, it had scared the hell out of her. She'd tried her best and nearly gotten people killed. After she'd snuck back home and stayed up until six in the morning, shaking and checking the internet news over and over again to make sure that no one had died from that, she finally had called in sick the next morning and spent the day in bed. She'd almost gotten people killed.

She closed her eyes. Wiretap continued. "So yeah, after I was cutting you out of the car yesterday, imagine my surprise when my sensors were going off along the same wavelengths I got last time I got close to Jack Flash. Only I wasn't, he was across the lot. I was close to you. Then boom, the readings go down to almost nothing when Jack disappears again. And go down to nothing at all the INSTANT you go unconscious."

Maria opened her eyes. Well, this was it. For all that she'd hidden it, for all that she'd tried her best, in the end it had meant nothing.

Wait.

Why had Wiretap used that white noise thingy, then?

She looked Wiretap over carefully. The brown-haired woman was smiling, watching her face. Waiting for an answer. There was a nervous energy to her, and one knee was bouncing up and down, as she drummed her heel against the floor. She was probably one of those thin people who forgot to eat all the time, and burned up most of her energy with nervous tics. Maria envied her that, her waistline could use something like that these days.

She blinked again, focused. Okay. How to give her side of things without giving too much away? Well, first find out what Wiretap wanted.

"Suppose... Just suppose this is true and I'm this Jack Flash... Person. What are you going to do about it?"

Wiretap grinned in triumph, leaned forward a bit and popped her goggles up. Brown eyes under them, with the telltale circles of contact lenses. "I knew it! No, no, don't look like that. I mean, I'm not trying to trick you here- Look. I'm going to do the same thing Marshal did, and I'm gonna ask you to join us."

Maria stayed silent for a long minute, but her eyes gave her response. Wiretap's smile faded. "Okay. Okay look, you can't go and fade out right now- Well, I'm pretty sure you can't, but anyway what I'm saying is that if you want to tell me no here, I would really like an explanation. Because seriously, you'd be a game changer here. You could do a LOT of good. Because things? Right now? They're kind of going to hell."

Maria looked to the side. "Do... You have a secret identity? I don't know your face and I don't care who you are, I'm just asking."

"Yeah. If you're worried about that, don't be. The PRT's great at covering those up."

"What's your job in your secret identity?"

"Well, I don't really have one. I mean, I pose as a techie and drive to work every morning, but I come here instead. But I get a basic stipend, and the devices I invent and patent get sold through the PRT, the rights make me money you wouldn't believe-"

"How about Dust Devil?"

"Uh, well, he doesn't make and sell any devices, of course. But his room and board are covered, most expenses are paid, and the stipend is plenty for him."

"So neither of you have children?"

Wiretap was quiet for a moment. "No. No we don't. Look, I think I see where this is going-"

Maria looked back at her. "Being a cop means being on call all hours, pretty much. It's hard to take care of my daughters, but my relatives pitch in. Well, the ones who are still alive and still worth a damn. Does the PRT have daycare, or a family package?"

Wiretap's knee bobbed up and down, faster, showing more agitation. "Look, they can work something out. You don't have to KEEP being a cop."

"But I'm on record as a cop. I don't have a degree, I was lucky to get the job. Say I AM this lightning man you think I am. If I quit now, and the lightning man starts showing up, and I'm still getting by somehow without even having a job, then it's going to look kind of funny, right? Maybe kind of easy to figure out for one of those thinker type villains, yes?"

Wiretap grimaced. "Look. The PRT's got a LOT of experience with stuff like this. They'd be willing to work with you. They could work something, hell, maybe you leave town for a while, train and fight the good fight somewhere else-"

"And leave my relatives behind. My mother, who's on social security and not much of that. Every friend the girls have. All of our roots."

Wiretap sighed, as Maria continued.

"All to go fight people who can probably kill me, if I screw up. And leave my daughters with BOTH parents gone."

Wiretap looked away. "I... Yeah, I won't lie. It's bad sometimes. I've buried a lot of friends. That's why we need you. I just- Hell."

She put the goggles down, and looked back. "I tell you what. I'll make you a deal. You help us out. Not as you, I mean... You do whatever it is you do and conjure up Jack Flash a few times, to help us out, and I'll let it go. You give it a try, and THEN you choose. And if you still choose no, then I'll let it go."

Maria blinked, thought it over.

"Theoretically-"

"Oh, come off of it. I'm not being a jerk here and I'm even jamming the damn taps. Throw me a fuckin' bone here."

Maria sighed. Yeah, no sense in pretending. "It's what you said earlier, a projection. I can call him, but it kind of occupies me. I'm not safe to drive while he's out. So unless you're nearby when trouble hits-"

"Hm. What's your range?"

"I'm not sure. I can feel the electricity of things for a few blocks around me, but-"

Wiretap snapped her head up, held up a hand with a violent motion. Maria shut up, and Wiretap snapped the jammer shut. "Yes? Sorry, wasn't paying attention, repeat? Shit. Okay."

She stood, looked to Maria. "Think about what I said. Nah, na ah!" She held up a finger, and Maria shut her mouth. "Don't reply. It's cool. I've got your number, I'll be in touch later. Another car just blew up, so I'm needed. Bye!"

And she ran out of the room, leaving Maria to sink back into the bed.

After a few minutes of stewing, she got up, found her clothes in a cabinet across the room, and started dressing. It was time to find Brad, retrieve her daughters, and leave this place. 


	12. Common Cause

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon her property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

**COMMON CAUSE**

2_102, 05/23/2012 _

_CARL'S BAD CAVERN_

_ ADOBE ROW, SANCTI_

Eve smiled to herself, as they waited in the dim light. The location was appropriate, and suited her mood. Dark and possibly violent.

About a century and a half ago, missionary priests had tried ministering to the native americans of the region. It hadn't gone well. The few converts from the local tribes had constructed adobe houses near the mission, ekeing out a meager living from the crops they could tease out of the soil. Over time as the government cracked down on the natives, more and more of them flocked to the protection of the mission, and slowly the district grew.

Around the turn of the century, as the town had grown into a decent-sized travel stop on the way to Abilene, territory around the Mission became valuable. The priests of the Mission had fought and fought hard to keep the land that its converts had built on for their families. It didn't go well, and many of them were forced to leave by greedy land speculators, who chased the native inhabitants off, bulldozed the adobe houses, and crammed the land full of low-cost housing which they sold at jacked-up prices. Few traces of their original inhabitants remained in that new neighborhood. Still, from that point on, the twelve streets around the Mission would forever be known as "Adobe Row."

When the highways were built and easier travel to Abilene meant business was drawn away from Sancti, then money started to dry up and old, crumbling buildings were foreclosed upon, abandoned, and left to moulder away in the heart of the city. They became some of the worst and most famous slums in Northern Texas, and though things had briefly perked up with the oil boom a few years back, they were still a dangerous place full of the poor, the desperate, the junkies, and the crooks.

And Carl's Bad Cavern was one of many low-cost dives where a good chunk of them went drinking each night.

It had a different name once. Back in the 20s, it had been a speakeasy. The building had gone through a few changes since then, and the bar could operate openly these days. Upstairs it was stained chrome fixtures, tattered american indian memorabilia hanging from the walls, and a faded Texan flag hung up behind the grainy, boxy old television in the corner.

But downstairs, past the keg storage, in a level below the basement were the remnants of the old speakeasy. Accessible from the storm sewers, and with enough concrete around them that electronic reception was quite impossible, it made a perfect meeting spot for the villains of Sancti. It was neutral ground, used only when discussion was necessary. Most of the time, it wasn't... The various powers had gotten into a rhythm, gotten used to each other. Skirmishes here and there, violence through proxy, with the occasional territory grab. It couldn't last, of course, but for the last few months, there had been a stalemate born of both apathy and a sense that the balance was too close for easy victories.

The car bombs had changed that balance.

Now there was both violence in the air, and blood on someone's hands.

Someone had killed her sister-in-faith! And for that, Eve would hurt them. Badly.

Now there would be a reckoning. But first, talking. Threat, allegations, things left unsaid... One had to follow the forms, after all.

And so Father Figure had called a meeting, arrived first and claimed his seat. Samson was on his left, and Eve on his right. A counterpunch of threat, the strong man and the woman who could call poisonous serpents out of any fluid. And three, three, the holy trinity. Three... It had taken much time for Father to subtly use his power to mold things to this. But the two other groups that mattered, they would each send three representatives. Three threes, and thus god was appeased by the secret number. Eve took comfort in that fact, at least.

She also took comfort in the fact that the location worked to her advantage. It wasn't THAT far to the kegs upstairs. And she had other countermeasures ready, if need be. Hell, a hip flask was the simplest thing in the world to hide on her lush form.

General Crockett was the first to show up, with Semper Fire and Pilgrim behind him. Crockett was unpowered, as everyone knew. But the tall, string bean of a man to his right who was wearing a gas mask and a high-and-tight was a top-rated pyrokineticist. And the unassuming, duster-clad older gentleman on his left could safely teleport to pretty much any place on the planet. Hell, probably a few beyond... If he didn't mind a one-way trip. A combination of (literal) firepower and an easy escape... The truce at Carl's had never been broken, but the self-proclaimed "General" took no chances.

Father smiled at them. "Bless your souls, General. Have a seat." The Militia Men stood, expressionless, each of them filing into a loose parade rest. Pilgrim doing so a half-step behind the other two, almost ill-at-ease. Father shot Eve a wink, and she hid a smile. He'd called her attention to it. In the event of trouble, they'd go after Pilgrim first. The man had a nervous disposition, and if they could get him to port out to save his own skin, it'd make dealing with the others easier.

The Graveyard Gang arrived last, striding in from the sewer entrance and bringing a reek with them that was more than the mustiness of the storm drains. Grim was dressed formally in a hooded robe, with his scythe over his shoulder. His face was raw and slick with exposed muscle, and bloodshot, lidless eyes roved back and forth in the redness of his skull. Gloved hands gripped the handle of the scythe, and Eve could not tell if he was smiling. Eve shuddered.

If Grim was disturbing enough on his own, the next one through the door made her stifle a shriek. Lumbering, uneven, made of piles of dead and rotting flesh crammed loosely together and ADHERING to each other through some process she really didn't want to know, the figure that was Glom moved into the room, straightening up to its full nine-foot height, and using three arms that weren't his own to hold the door open. Glom could absorb corpses around his own form, link his nervous system to the remnants around him, and fold the salvageable muscle mass together into appendages and a sort of armor that was both tough and strong. With enough corpses, he could theoretically give Samson a run for his money, and the shifting of her friend and sometime lover behind her told Eve that Samson was ready, just in case. The thought gave her a little comfort, though her eye was drawn to embalming fluid dripping slowly from one lump of organs glistening on Glom's side. She could maybe do something if she needed, there.

The last member of the Graveyard Gang was almost disappointing in her mundanity. Whipporwill was a small, blonde woman in a black, gothic-style dress, with a beaked plague-doctor's mask on her face. Father sighed in annoyance, as the mask turned to him and bobbed, once, twice. Whipporwill's power was sound manipulation, everything from silence to amplification to mimicry. She was a solid counter to Father Figure, and her presence here meant that Grim probably had an axe... Well, a scythe to grind.

Grim and Whipporwill sat down immediately, the gruesome skeletal figure's eyes not leaving Father's own. Father, for his part, frowned and drummed his fingers on the table. Glom took up a position behind his teammates, folding arms made of six or seven varied corpse arms apiece protectively around their shoulders. Eve watched with sick fascination as Whipporwill reached up, stroked a dark-skinned corpse's arm almost tenderly. Feeling her bile rise, Eve glanced aside. Do NOT want to know, she thought to herself.

"Well. Since we're all gathered-" Father started, then glanced up at the sound of boots on the stairs. Many boots. A quick glance between the three groups. There were no independents left in the city of note, since Scorpus had been captured, save for Jack Flash, and he was by no means a villain.  
The other possibility was ludicrous.

But, Eve recalled hearing somewhere, as kachina-masked faces hove into view... When you eliminate the impossible, whatever's left over is what you've got. Or something like that. She hadn't sat through the whole movie.

"Well." Said Grim, as General Crockett frowned, and crossed his arms, and Father Figure rubbed his chin. "Fancy seeing YOU here."

It was Chief himself, followed by Little Cloud and Sundown, and two more besides. Eve racked her brain for what she remembered of them... The group known as the Serpent Lodge had been mostly inactive since before she saw the light, and had joined both Father Figure's congregation and his bed. Chief was a hell of a fighter, and had SOME sort of power, but no one knew just quite what it was. Speculation was that he was some sort of lower-order thinker... Little Cloud was a projecting empath, who could play with negative emotions. Sundown was fast, ludicrously fast, and he could carry both items and people along in his wake. His kachina mask looked like a coyote, and his costume was buckskins and chaps. He had what looked to be a couple of coils of rope on his belt. The muscled figure behind him was Bison... No mask there, no need for one. Bison was a brute, plain and simple. Injuries to him healed swiftly, and temporarily increased his muscle mass, and he'd already started out bulky. He wore a simple t-shirt and sweat pants. Not much sense in a pricey costume when your body would swell and break it, in most fights. The last one in wore a mask covered with leaves along with a green dress, criss-crossed with bandoliers of bottles that clattered as she walked. Eve didn't know the last one. She twisted her lips, nervous.

They'd brought what had to be almost their whole team. They'd come in force. And worse, they hadn't come with THREE. The number was broken now, the trinity undone. Bad enough FOUR groups, but one with FIVE? Oh no...

"You didn't invite us, but we came anyway." Said Chief.

Father Figure spread his hands. "You haven't seen fit to join us these last few years."

"We had nothing to speak to you about."

"And now you do?"

"Perhaps. Why have you called this meeting?"

Father Figure kept the annoyance off his face, but Eve could tell it was there by the way he shifted slightly. And there was that tone in his voice that bespoke patience against great, great odds.

"One of ours is dead, and it was no accident. That carbomb yesterday? It killed Stigmata."

"And the one on Saturday was aimed at us." Grim spoke up, and Father Figure turned his head, surprised. "You?"

"Myself and one other. We're okay, thanks for asking. Funny thing though, the follow-up sniper left THIS at the scene when he fled." Grim reached behind him, and Glom pulsed, OOZED a long, wrapped package out through blood and mush. Grim dropped it on the table, and both Father Figure and the Militia men jerked back as blood splattered across them. Whipoorwill stifled a chuckle, and Eve scowled at her.

Grim waited a minute, as the rest of the seated crowd glared at him, then rasped a chuckle himself, and unwrapped it. A rifle with the mark of the Faithful burned into the stock, the Crux Engel itself!

"What? That's not..." Samson reached for it, and Father Figure raised a hand. He looked at Grim. "Follow up gunman, you say?"

"Yep. Heavy rounds. Custom ammo. Then explosives when we closed."

"Black hair on this sniper? Black bodysuit?"

"Yeah." Grim picked a bit of gristle out of his teeth, looked at it, flicked it aside.

"Someone like that took several shots at Samson and myself when we attempted to save Stigmata. I think we have the same foe."

"Bout our estimate. This? This ain't your style. More theirs." Grim picked up the rifle one-handed by the stock, raised the barrel and waved it vaguely in the direction of the AMM group. General Crockett frowned, reached out with one finger, and moved the barrel over to point at an empty patch of wall. Grim didn't fight him on it.

"That's a hell of a thing to say," Crockett said, calm as still water. "We have no reason to go after you at this time."

Grim's ruin of a mouth twitched open a fraction wider. "Aside from trying to grab our share of the meth trade, our territory, running off long-term rivals that you KNOW you can't take in a fair fight, and kicking us out of Texas because we're not native rednecks, you mean?"

Father Figure folded his hands in front of him. "Gunmen and carbombs ARE more up your alley, General. It's practically Failsafe's stock in trade."

"We had nothing to do with this one." Said General Crockett. "If we HAD, we wouldn't have stopped with Stigmata. And there would be a lot fewer faces around this table right now."

Father Figure examined Crockett carefully. Grim shook his head. "If not you, then who?"

"Devil Dog."

Every head present turned toward Chief. Then, one by one, every attendee started looking around the table, studying each other carefully. Semper Fire turned and tapped Pilgrim on the shoulder, signed something with gloved fingers. Pilgrim signed back. Grim had turned up to Whipporwill, and was muttering.

They knew Devil Dog. They ALL knew the story of Devil Dog.

If it WAS Devil Dog, then who was he after?

"We considered that." Said Grim, glancing back to Glom. "Not all of ours started out local. A few have travelled, been in cities where he was working. Got some experience there before. But it doesn't fit his modus operandi."

Eve felt her attention drawn subtly to Grim, and she knew she wasn't the only one. One by one, the conversations fell silent as everyone looked at the macabre, oozing skeletal form. Oblivious, Grim forged ahead. "He picks someone. Maybe a couple, hard to say, and he goes after 'em hard and fast. He doesn't pop a bomb and plink away for a bit, then give it up. Besides, he targeted two different groups. What are the odds of him going after two at the same time in different groups?"

It sounded weak to Eve. No one knew why Devil Dog picked who he picked. She wasn't an expert on the vigilante, but she knew the basics. If he wanted to pick two people, then why couldn't he?

Then again, he'd apparently gone after Stigmata, one of the finest people Eve had ever known. Going after the Graveyard gang she could understand... The DEMONS had empowered them. It was the duty of all who heeded the angels to oppose them, after all. But she and the rest of the Faithful were GOOD. It was just the rest of the world that was somewhat askew, was all.

"He's trying to get us to go after each other." General Crockett had spoken, and eyes turned to HIM. "It's like an old classic western. Gunslinger comes into town, goes and stirs up th' local rivals, gets 'em fightin' each other."

"Fist fullhhhha dollars." The gurgling voice came out of Glom, and she held back a shudder. She wasn't the only one. "Good flihhhhck." Foul air accompanied his words. All the heads attached to him moved their mouths obscenely as he spoke.

The General cleared his throat. "That's... Possible. Likely, to tell the truth. Ain't no secret we've been sittin' starin' at each other for months now. Town's big, but there's quite a few of us here. Something was bound to give sooner or later."

Grim turned his leer at the general. But it was Chief who spoke.

"And what do you propose?"

The General smiled. "The local cops are helping us out, even if we didn't make'em. They've got cruisers out poking around on PRT orders, searchin' for Devil Dog's weapon caches in all the little nooks and crannies about town. To the detriment of a few folks who ain't here. So sad." Eve caught a flicker of anger in Grim's eyes, the tilt of his head. But then it was gone. She glanced back to the General.

"So he'll have to find weapons elsewhere..." said General Crockett, letting it trail off.

"And your flunkies run most of the weapons trade in town. Hell, in the area." Said Grim.

The General smiled. "So we set up teams. Different bunches of us working together, different shifts. And when we hear something... A robbery, an out-of-towner looking for hardware, we confirm and then we drop the hammer."

"What, kill him?" Even with no lips, Grim was sneering. "He comes back. He always does."

The General spread his hands. "Who says we have to kill him? Cripple him, tie him up in some forgotten place, keep him fed and hydrated so he doesn't die. He doesn't die, he doesn't come back."

There was a pause, as the groups considered the plan. Eve felt her lips tighten over her teeth. Her thoughts went into darkness.

I could spend some time with him, when he's helpless. Make him pay for what he did to Stigmata. Cut him over and over, and grow serpents from his bloody wounds, to writhe around him and spit venom in his eyes like... Like... Huh. Wasn't there some false pagan god who was stuck like that? She couldn't remember the name. Didn't matter anyway, God was god.

Grim considered for a bit, then nodded. "All right. Until we shake this dog off, you're on. Nobody tries a Clint Eastwood in my town. Always more of a John Wayne fan anyway."

Father Figure nodded, slowly. "Well. I suppose we're in. Mind you, this doesn't affect business. Or territories. And of course, we'll be watchin' y'all just as much as you'll be watchin' us, I suppose." He spread his hands, beamed.

Then the room looked over at the last contingent. To Chief, who was... Staring at General Crockett? Maybe. It was hard to tell behind the mask.

The mask moved, slowly, side to side. "No. I think not."

General Crockett frowned, crossed his arms. "You got a reason there, redskin? Or you just being contrary?"

"Yes." Then Chief turned, and gestured to his crew. "We will find him on our own."

Eve watched them go with some relief. The masks creeped her out. They were heathens, too...

She slid her eyes over to Glom, and repressed another shudder. Well. Not to say the current company was much better.

There were a few more words bantered back and forth. Details between the leaders, minor things. Finally, they rose and left.

Back to the stretch limo, where the two smiling acolytes waited, their three-piece suits out-of-place in the parking lot of Carl's Bad Cavern. They gave a thumbs up... No car bombs on THEIR watch.

Still, she felt a knot of tension across her shoulders as the car started up, didn't relax until it was underway. Next to her, Father Figure slid in, idly slipped an arm around her shoulders. Samson slid in on the other side, and slipped his own arm around her waist. She sighed and settled back into their arms as they left.

Father Figure sighed. "Well. No help for it. This'll be treachery at some point, just a matter of when."

Samson growled, shook his long hair. "We don't need them."

"Actually we do. And more. It's time to give Solomon a call, I think."

Eve's eyes opened wide. What? No! After the last time, how could he-

But then she felt her anxiety fading, as her eyes were drawn to Samson, and his to hers. She sighed again, relaxed into Samson' arms. He traced her chin with one large hand before kissing her, as Father Figure withdrew his own arm, and smirked, unnoticed. Then he pulled out his phone, and sent a brief text, before turning back to Eve and unzipping the back of her halter-top.

By the time the car reached the Sanctum, they were all as nude as the original sinless, and her cares were far behind her as other matters demanded her _attention_.


	13. Hell on Earth (Part 1)

**This is a fanfiction story that takes place in the world setting of Worm. Worm is a Supervillain serial story, with a serious amount of work, world-building, and character depth built into it. You can find it with an appropriate google search, probably by including the keywords "worm", "parahumans", and "wordpress".**

**Worm is the property of its author, a person who goes by the alias of Wildbow. I intend no infringement upon his property, nor profit from this story. I write this only for fun.**

_And in the darkest hour of the night, with both her daughters safely in bed and a beer in her hand, Maria watched television with the sound turned off and remembered a night several years back where everything had changed forever._

**Hell on Earth - Part 1**

_20:01, 01/02/2010 _

_THE TOWN OF GATEWAY _

_TEN MILES SOUTH OF SANCTI_

The town's name was Gateway, and it had a population of roughly 50 before tonight.

Maria had a feeling that the number had gone down, seriously down from that in the last half-hour or so. It had taken them time to get the cordon set up, flashing lights blocking all roads out, SWAT teams on the way, Protectorate called in.

But it would take the capes time to get there. There had been trouble near Houston, an all-hands-on-deck situation that she might hear about in the news later. If there was a later for Maria Navarrez.

Because right now? It was looking like that was up in the air at the minute.

She peered through binoculars, at the town... Well, not much of a town, really. An intersection off of a little-used state route, a few boarded up buildings, and the houses of those too old, stubborn, or poor to leave. A single gas station, and a diner. And of course, a church.

The church, with greenish lights flaring, flickering, filling the windows with a pulsing pattern. Not quite a strobe light, not quite similar to glowsticks at a rave.

They almost seemed to dance. And there was a time or two, where she swore that they were almost reaching out to her, looking BACK at her-

She lowered the binoculars, looked away. Straight into the worried eyes of Brad.

She smiled, quickly. "Wondered when you'd get here." The smile died, as her partner took the binoculars, looked, cursed under his breath. Even with their cruiser between themselves and the church five hundred yards distant, it was WAY too close for their tastes.

"What is it?" Brad asked.

"Twenty-five minutes ago dispatch gets a panicked call. Says shadow monsters are breaking down the doors of her neighbor's houses, dragging them outside and into the church. Dispatch marks it as a prank, but then gets three more. All of them break off in the middle of it, we get scrambled. First cruiser to get here's over there."

She pointed at the town's lone intersection. The wrecked remnants of the car had been PEELED. Of the officers who had probably been inside, there was no sign.

"They're in the church?"

She kept silent, searched for the words. Couldn't find them.

"Mare. Talk to me here."

"They used thermal imagers to look at the church." She said.

He was quiet for a bit. "Ah. Shit."

"Yeah. There's four things in there that are still alive. Two guys who don't match Vickers and Stevens' profiles, and two kids. The rest... It's ugly, ese."

He settled back against the car, drew his sidearm. She shook her head. "What are you gonna shoot? We're just stuck here waiting until the snipers get here."

"The guy killed cops in Texas. He knows what's gonna happen. He's gonna try something. Shadow monsters, you say?"

"It's what the caller said." Maria raised the binoculars... Frowned.

There was movement over by the gas station. Her gaze was drawn to an SUV parked at one of the pumps... The passenger side door was swinging open. A man wearing a suit was peering out, looking left, right. The lights of the station were bright, the brightest illumination left in the town, so she could make out every detail.

That SUV was new. It didn't look local.

She reached into the cruiser, snagged the radio mic. "This is Navarrez. Motion at the gas station, bystander. Anyone got an angle on the plates?"

Crackle, hiss. LOTS of crackle hiss, the radio was barely audible through it. "Navarrez, this is Gorman. I see him. Plates are out-of-state. Californian."

Brad frowned. "What's up with the radio?"

She pointed at the church. "Whatever's goin' on in there is breaking up the radio. Cell phones too. We're jus' at the edge of it, and it's making things all messed up." Her mind was already thinking ahead, though. She had a feeling that... Yep, he was running for his life, straight in their direction. A small handgun tucked down at this side in one hand, and a metal briefcase in the other.

Drugs? She wondered. He had something of that vibe to him. Definitely a courier of some sort.

She watched, tensing as he ran. Hoping... Ten yards. Twenty. Thirty from the SUV...

Motion.

From the edges, out of the houses and down from the sky, wispy forms drifted, solidified... Something doglike the size of a compact car, three-headed and flickering as it loped... A great wolf with an owl-headed nude man on its back... A bird of prey with a ten-foot wingspan, and what looked like a disembodied crocodile head devouring its legs...

Brad made a strangled noise beside her, snapped her out of her stunned reverie. The crocodile-bird thing got in front of the man in a heartbeat, and the stranger put three shots toward it, to no effect that she could see.

Brad moved behind the trunk of the cruiser, cracked it open. Started pulling out roadflares, handed one to Maria. "What?" She asked, not taking her eyes from the spectacle. The wolf-rider had closed behind him, tore at him with some kind of sword, but the man was dodging, shooting. Still no effect...

"They're shadows, right? They didn't go after him in the car, right? So they don't like the light!"

"We don't know that! Not for sure-"

Brad was already running toward the stranger with the briefcase, lighting the flare as he went. It HISSED to life, magnesium sparking...

"Mierda!" She fumbled with the matches in the trunk, got hers lit, and trailed behind him, trying to catch up. He had a good twenty yard lead already...

As she watched, the three-headed dog thing pounced on the man who screamed and fell. Shadowy they might have been, but they looked real enough! She watched as one head worried his gun hand, and blood glistened and sprayed in the darkness...

Then the owl-headed thing was looking up, gesturing with its dark blade, and the hawk-gator creature flapped towards them, hesitated...

The hissing brilliance of the magnesium flares killed her night vision. She couldn't see the creatures worth a damn the closer they got, and some part of her mind was shrieking at her over and over again that this was stupid, this would never work, the hell was she doing...

But you get your partner's back. That was the first lesson she'd learned on the beat. You get your partner's back, even when they pull stupid shit. Especially when they pull stupid shit, because then they're going to need you to pull them out of the fire.

And in a few heartbeats, they were fifty yards from the man, who was slowly being dragged backward... Forty yards and something flew at them out of the darkness... But curved before getting within a few yards of the flares they waved at it. Thirty yards and the wolf-rider was charging... And fading as he went, until he was forced to break aside, solidity returning before he disappeared and Maria lost sight of him... Twenty yards, and the three-headed dog dropped the stranger, who immediately staggered to his feet... Ten yards, and the stranger was fumbling on the ground for his gun as the dog fled... Then they were to him, and Brad grabbed one shoulder, while Maria kicked the gun away from his questing fingers. Just because someone's in danger doesn't mean they're not a threat. That was the second lesson she'd learned on the beat. "No time! Come on amigo!"

The man shifted the suitcase to an underarm grip, and this close, Maria could see a thin chain connecting it to a thin metal bracer around his wrist. What the hell was in there? He was way too well dressed for the average Cartel thug...

Time for that later. They turned to flee while the going was good...

-And as they did, with no warning or explanation, thin, high notes of music trickled down from nowhere. It...

...It was the most beautiful music she had ever heard...

She stopped. Her adrenaline ran out, leaving only ache in her muscles. She was tired... Maybe she should rest?

Someone was shouting something at her using a bullhorn, back at the police line. She was annoyed, because it made it harder to hear the music- No, wait. She could hear the music just fine. It was in her head, she understood. Great! She turned to tell the good news to Brad and the stranger, only to find them sitting on the ground too, grinning in rapture. The stranger's mangled hand pumped blood onto his pants leg as he cradled it in his lap.

Beyond them, in what little field of vision she had with the glare of the roadflares distracting her, she could see someone beckoning from the door of the church. And as she looked at the figure, the music SOARED! Then he pulled back slightly, and it faded a bit, and she groaned in disappointment. Tottering to her feet, she started toward the church, and she heard shuffling beside her, as the other two did the same.

Once they were away from the roadflares a bit, shadowy forms fell in around them, walking, keeping pace... Normally she knew she'd be upset, but the music took priority, here! It was the voice of the angels, the song of the spheres, the exquisite harmony of all that was RIGHT and BEAUTIFUL in the world. If the price of hearing this was death by monsters, then so be it.

The figure was in sight now, illuminated by the green, strobing lights from the interior of the church. A thin, attractive man in a loincloth, and nothing else. He smiled at her beatifically, and grabbed her arm to pull her in. Once through he let her go, and helped Brad and the stranger in before pulling the door closed. Around him, the shadow-things oozed through the walls.

And through the music, she heard the bare-chested man call back to the interior of the church. "Three more, Solomon. Just like you said. Get ready, I'm dropping the song in five, four, three..."

And then the music was gone and the shadows were full of teeth, darkness, and pain.


End file.
